Mr. Kunitz is, after thirty years' writing, brought to us [in Selected Poems: 1928–1958] with rich plaudits from his fellow-American poets. He is indeed a big poet, given to traditional poses and metres, but holding them both with muscular professional skill. He is a rift-loader, a maker of weighted lines, elaborating complex figures with golden-mouth magniloquence. He will frankly use the big word, the large statement qualified only by the cleanness of its expression. 'I suffer the twentieth century,' he says, sardonically converting his suffering into pleasure before the hypocrite lecteur. There is variety here, and a rather Gravesian humour—note a splendid maledictory poem on a Roman pickpocket. But the central position is stilt-jack Yeatsian:

                   Imagination makes
                   Out of what stuff it can
                   An action fit
                   For a more heroic stage
                   Than body ever walked on.

It is good to feel such power nakedly used.

Frank Kermode...