The most rousing volume of verse I have seen in a long time [is Robinson Jeffers's "Tamar and Other Poems."]… Few recent volumes of any sort have struck me with such force as this one has; few are as rich with the beauty and strength which belong to genius alone….

[Two] long narrative pieces are its real contribution…. [The title-poem, "Tamar"], seems to me to point a new path for narrative verse in America. The rhythms, for one thing, are variable and free; now crabbed and nervous, now copious and sweeping, they get their story told as few are told—with style. And their story, though it is anything on earth but pleasant, was magnificently worth telling. Tamar, the heroine, begins by being like the Tamar who figures in the thirteenth chapter of II Samuel, but she develops in an ampler strain. It is obvious that Mr. Jeffers's inspiration has been Greek rather than Hebrew; the House of Cauldwell is the House of Atreus, and the deeds done there are such as have rarely been attempted in song since Aeschylus petrified an audience with his Clytemnestra and his Furies.