Aucoin: Tony - Ending the Life

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"Somehow, Merrill remains underrated. It's easy to see why he wasn't always taken seriously during his lifetime: He was the fabulously wealthy heir to the Merrill-Lynch fortune; as a young man, he looked (and probably acted) like a dandyish aesthete straight out of Proust; his life as a gay man led him to avoid certain kinds of publicity; and he was unabashed in his love for puns, rhymes, and pentameter. Now, 21 years after his death, I hope we can see Merrill for the artist he was: an alchemist with the atomic materials of language; a pioneering poet of gay life and love; and a prophet of the havoc our species continues to wreak on the natural world." — Matthew Aucoin