Here's one small macro that I think addresses most of the pain: ;; (with f ((var val)...) body...) ;;==> (f (lambda (var...) body...) val...) (defm

Here's one small macro that I think addresses most of the pain: ;; (with f ((var val)...) body...) ;;==> (f (lambda (var...) body...) val...) (defmacro with (f bindings &body body) `(funcall ,f (lambda ,(mapcar #'car bindings) ,@body) ,@(mapcar #'cadr bindings))) You use it like this, assuming you have monad functions UNIT and BIND: (with bind ((v1 e1)) (with bind ((v2 e2)) (unit (+ v1 v2)))) If you need multiple types of monads, and you can't just give them each different function names, then use generic functions for UNIT and BIND (with two differences from Haskell: Haskell's 'return' is generic in the resulting monad type, not the argument type, and the type's resolved at compile time). When I've done this in Scheme I only needed one kind of monad, so I didn't bother. WITH can be handy for other things; I already had it lying around when the occasion came up to use a monad in Scheme. Oleg's written about another approach using delimited continuations.