SOURCE: "On the Confusions in Poetry," in The New York Times Book Review, October 28, 1945, pp. 1, 18, 20, 22.

In the following laudable review of Essays on Rime, Matthiessen contends that the "book may very well be the most remarkable contribution to American art yet to have come out of the war."

This book may very well be the most remarkable contribution to American art yet to have come out of the war. Its title may suggest to the general reader a bookish piece by a young man growing up in a library and steeped in the period of Boileau and Pope. It happens to have been written by a sergeant in the Medical Corps who was just completing his third year of active duty in the Pacific. When Karl Shapiro was drafted in the spring before Pearl Harbor, his name was probably known only to readers of "New Directions" and the...