My. What surprising proof this thread is of the disappearance of women from the board.
I have that same selected, and while I can skip a lot of the ghostly stuff, the poems I love I really love. I agree completely with the quoted bits Erik posted above, except that for me, the wordplay and the baroque qualities are great pleasures. (I'm also reading a lot of early Hecht lately, of the sort people consider less good than his late work. So sue me.)
Merrill's quiet poems are pleasurable, too, and besides "Investiture at Cecconi's" I love "The Broken Home" and "The Summer People." I find Merrill effective at digging into unspoken emotions, domestic matters, interiority.
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