I think from here on one might chance it that Robert Phillips is going to have a place among the young poets. His Inner Weather is a thoughtful book. Much of the writing is very skillful….

If one could read the poem ["Weird Sister"] through, one could see that not only are there Shakespearean echoes here, Keatsian echoes, and echoes from Coleridge because we're dealing with what Graves calls the white goddess. What struck me in going through the poem was the way in which Mr. Phillips had modified the Yeatsian idiom. I suppose, if there is one influence here that seems to me to be at least conscious, it would be from Yeats. (p. 44)

Another thing that struck me in reading Mr. Phillips was how the post World War II generation has assimilated its literary heritage. It looks at Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Yeats, but from a new position. The poets who were writing in the thirties and early forties didn't turn and look over their shoulders at the work of Eliot or Dylan Thomas. These poets following World War II do just that. They take the writing seminar for granted; they like to do poems about pictures, particularly zany pictures, and melodramas. They can go back and pick up verse form such as Haiku. They look on the world as beaten from the oppressions of World War II. They are in a sense down to rock bottom in a way that poets in the 1920's and 30's were not. The bomb as we say may have something to do with it.

But I think there is another consideration, namely, that each generation stands on the shoulders of its predecessor; in this case I think there are two predecessors—one composed of the 1920's and secondly Dylan Thomas. One must admit I think that the ironies of Eliot and Pound are in the true sense of the word, sensational. The wasteland image is sensational. The cantos reach in all directions for arcane learning. Then in the thirties we have Thomas with his ocean rhythms which no one should try to repeat because they are peculiar to him. And in Auden the poet who protects himself by ironies, by being a wiseacher. But with these new poets like Phillips, the irony is there but it is reined in, in control. This sort of poetry is being written in England and I suppose some of it is being written in America but this poem is the one that most struck me from Mr. Phillips' poetry.

If this volume is indicative, then we can rest in the assurance that Mr. Phillips' contribution to the American literary scene in the next generation may be considerable. (pp. 44-5)

William Van O'Connor, "Comer," in The North American Review (reprinted by permission from The North American Review; copyright © 1966 by the University of Northern Iowa), Vol. 3, No. 6, November, 1966, pp. 44-5.