The promise that was revealed and widely recognized in August Derleth's first book of poems, "Hawk on the Wind," is … richly realized [in "Man Track Here"] Mr. Derleth has matured amazingly in a year's time, and now stands well out from the ruck of young poets. He is no imitator, no follower of schools and trends, but displays an originality and independence which made Edgar Lee Masters and Sinclair Lewis single him out as an important figure. His debt, if he has one, is to Walt Whitman and the early Masters; he is the poet of Sac Prairie, a lyrical Lewis.
Mr. Derleth has evolved his own verse schemes, although they take their departure from those of Whitman and Masters. But there is none of the sprawling formlessness of Whitman, or the flatness of much of Masters. He is at all times musical, though as with Gerard Manley Hopkins, it is necessary to attune the ear to his music. Once it becomes familiar, the reader finds no lack of it. He writes largely of things and people, but more of the things of nature that he knows better now than of the people about whom he has much to learn. He is refreshingly free from added ideologies, and very much in the great tradition of English poetry.
Mason Wade, "August Derleth's Poems," in The New York Times Book Review, August 20, 1939, p. 9.
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