Blasing, Mutlu Konuk, “Rethinking Models of Literary Change: The Case of James Merrill,” in American Literary History, Vol. 2, No. 2, Summer 1990, pp. 299-317.

Blasing explores a postmodernist emphasis in Merrill's work.

Buckley, C. A., “Quantum Physics and the Ouija-Board: James Merrill's Holistic World View,” in Mosaic, Vol. 26, No. 2, Spring 1993, pp. 39-61.

Buckley focuses on Merrill's interplay of science and poetry.

Vendler, Helen Hennessey, “James Merrill,” in Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American Poets, Harvard University Press, 1980, pp. 205-32.

Vendler includes a comprehensive explication of the Divine Comedies.

White, Edmund, “On James Merrill,” in The Burning Library: Essays, edited by David Bergman, Knopf, 1994, pp. 43-55.

White focuses on Merrill's “ambitious” The Book of Ephraim.