[A Boy's Will] is a little raw, and has in it a number of infelicities; underneath them it has the tang of the New Hampshire woods, and it has just this utter sincerity. It is not post-Miltonic or post-Swinburnian or post-Kiplonian. This man has the good sense to speak naturally and to paint the thing, the thing as he sees it. And to do this is a very different matter from gunning about for the circumplectious polysyllable. (p. 1)
He has now and then a beautiful simile, well used, but he is for the most part [simple]…. He is without sham and without affectation. (p. 2)
Ezra Pound, "'A Boy's Will'," in Poetry (© 1913 by The Modern Poetry Association; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission of the Editor of Poetry and New Directions, Agents for the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust), Vol. II, No. 2, May, 1913 (and reprinted in Robert Frost: The Critical Reception, edited by Linda W. Wagner, Burt Franklin & Co., Inc., 1977, pp. 1-2).
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