Summoning ghosts …

… ‘James Merrill: Life and Art,’ by Langdon Hammer - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Shorter lyrics like “After Greece,”  “Syrinx,”  “The Mad Scene” or “The Kimono” were so perfect, one wished to frame them and hang them on the wall. His longer poems, like “The Broken Home,”  “18 West 11th Street” or “Lost in Translation,” showed a gift for narrative, for sensuous evocation of the past, for the transformation of personal anecdote into poetry. In these and other poems, Merrill offered sublime meditations on the sense of loss that seems invariably to accompany all feelings of love.