Philip Booth is to Yvor Winters as the free love of a sorority hop is to Emma Goldman. But is he real? There is nothing whatever wrong except polite irresponsibility. ["Letter from a Distant Land"] is true decorative poetry. Can poetry outside the Far East ever be just decorative? I think with us it must always be haunted by its vatic role, and so judged. Behind Mallarmé in a peculiarly distorted way we can still hear the voice of Isaiah. Behind Philip Booth we can hear only the well bred stichomythy of the poetry seminar….

[His] I.B.M. polish has a disturbingly inhuman and inhumane science-fiction quality about it.