SOURCE: A review of People Live Here, in World Literature Today, Vol. 58, No. 4, Autumn, 1984, p. 602.

In the following review, Irwin offers a positive assessment of People Live Here.

People Live Here, the unassuming title of Louis Simpson's Selected Poems, provides a major body of work whose accessibility has always been determined by its truth, clarity and a profound simplicity reminiscent of the Russian storytellers, most notably Chekhov. Simpson's concerns are moral ones, and this expansive volume ironically portrays an American journey that moves from the bare and vital life of the infantryman to the hollow life of the contemporary suburban dweller. What is most amazing is that Simpson manages both dramas equally well. In “Carentan O Carentan” we are told:

Lieutenant, what's my duty, My place in the platoon? He too's a sleeping beauty, Charmed by that strange tune. 

Carentan O Carentan Before we met with you We...