[Many of the poems appearing in Selected Poems taken from Summer Anniversaries] have the feel of apprentice pieces, a formalistic and workshop atmosphere pervading…. The somewhat awkwardly worked frames of sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, odes, and other formal poems do not entirely constrict a naturally lyrical talent. The first poem in the book ["Ladies by Their Windows"], though with echoes of late Eliot, has gentle rhapsodic bursts to ruffle the generally detached posture….

By the time of Night Light …, Justice has moved an appreciable distance from academic and provincial formalism…. The influence of William Carlos Williams is evident in poems of the American landscape, and there is a hard-won new simplicity of diction in his improvizations on themes from Guillevic ("The Man Closing Up"). "Men at Forty" shows the gain in both freedom and control of this sparer medium: "Men at forty / Learn to close softly / The doors to...