[In Cumberland Station] Smith is not self-explanatory. His opening lies, often obscure, mysteriously referential, flatten out on the page in laconic presence…. After a while, the situations clear up. Smith is not a surrealist; implicit scenarios lie behind these brusque entrances. Smith, judging by his exquisite fitting of lines together, intends his opacity, his length of breath, and his peculiar style, in which full stops scarcely imply the end of anything and sentences which continue for lines and lines nonetheless keep a firm hold on themselves. (p. 407)

Smith is at his best writing about America—marshes, oyster scows,… Chicago, cross-country driving, singing as a boy in a church choir, visiting a decaying railroad station…. Cumberland Station gets better as it goes along; it lapses into imitation (of Hopkins, Thomas, and Lowell—like Berryman's earlier echoes) are forgivable in a second book, by a thirty-four-year-old poet. Smith at his best combines a gift for narrative with a gift for the mot juste—talents which rarely go together. He does not yet entirely trust his power of description to carry his feelings, and stops sometimes to make feeling explicit: the title poem ends,

                      Grandfather, I wish I had the guts
        to tell you this is a place I hope
        I never have to go through again.

Sentimentality and plain speaking sometimes get confused in this book. But Smith's best landscapes hover over meaning in a way both tantalizing and beautiful. (p. 408)