[The poems in "Poems"], the best of them, ought to be printed on pulp and offered at Woolworth's, a dime a copy. They'd sell, too. For these are poems for the millions, in the cities and out of them, those who would read, and read poems too, poems such as these, if only they could get to them: manna in the wilderness….

[The] work can be respected by those who know what good writing means and yet it touches and illuminates the humblest lives about us—without that offensive patronage which uses humanity for the effects of art. When I first picked up the book I paged through it lightly in the usual way, but soon came to a poem that attracted me, "To a Friend Who Has Moved to the East Side." It starts:

          What did you expect you were getting?

That's enough, in a short review, to give the effect of my meaning. There's the language and there's the straight look that goes with it. From that point on I read with interest. But the Fifth Section convinced me that I was dealing with a first-rate poet. Here you will find five poems, the accumulated work of Mr. Ignatow's thirty-four years at the craft, whose tragic force, economy of language and plastic sense governing the words begin to shape up into something impressive. I was deeply moved….

[It is] from such a man as Mr. Ignatow, to whom language is like his skin, [that we must] look for those innovations which will set us upon our feet in our writing….

Mr. Ignatow writes of what he knows. Therefore most of the poems come from the New York City "underworld." There's no slang. Slang is mere escapism. But this is almost an odor, foul with love. Such poems as those in the Fifth Section would be understood by a North Dakota farmer's wife in January and cheer her against the snow….

Mr. Ignatow, in the best of the work, gives a new sense of a low, melodious humming.