SOURCE: “One of Each—with Echoes,” in Southwest Review, Vol. 65, No. 1, Winter, 1981, pp. 110-14.

In the following excerpt, Stout praises the syntactical clarity and emotional restraint of Ostriker's poetic vision in A Dream of Springtime.

Words clash, streak the mind with sunbursts, ricochet and swoop into irony—ah! but Hopkins, Hopkins did it better! And Sexton, really tough, didn't lapse into cute words, or kitten's play. And Roethke, the academician, kept control, both of reader and himself: his meanings were graspable—and profound.

But that's the rub. To be different is not to be bad, or wrong, nor does it make the poems less important. One Hopkins, one Sexton, one Roethke were enough. These three contemporary poets [Francis Sullivan, Terry Kennedy, and Alicia Ostriker], put into circulation in attractive packages by The Smith in conjunction with Horizon Press, are vivaciously themselves, whatever echoes might infiltrate their lines and...