SOURCE: "Metamorphoses," in Poetry, Vol. CLXVI, No. 6, September, 1995, pp. 331-34.

[An American critic, poet, and educator, Yenser was a friend of Merrill's and wrote the study The Consuming Myth: The Work of James Merrill (1987). In the following tribute, which was delivered at the New York Public Library on May 13, 1995, he offers his thoughts on why "James Merrill will be among the handful of poets by whom we remember this century."]

Over the twenty-eight years that it was given me to know him, I had the occasion to introduce James Merrill a dozen times, at readings in locations ranging from New York through St. Louis to Los Angeles, and I got to know something about how to do that. I have no experience whatever in bidding him farewell. So I am not going to do that.

Once upon a time, three Amherst undergraduates gained clandestine entry to the former...