Among [those] poets who have taken the risk of throwing away what reputation they have for something they may never attain, Philip Booth is one of the most interesting and admirable.

["The Islanders"] is unusual among those of the many occasional lyricists of his generation: it is a concerted attempt to theme a large body of material, to develop a consistent and working attitude about his subjects that will allow them to come through to the reader in a multi-leveled, massive way. In the main I think he succeeds quite well in an area which lesser poets—those still riding the spent wave of the Forties and the well-made poem—don't even know is there. His water-locked, rugged world of love and uncertainty and responsibility is a valuable one, and it is very much to Mr. Booth's credit that he shows us that this world, in its symbolic implications, is as real as it is in its own brute and terrifying fact. That is, I take it, the task of his kind of poet. (p. 4)