In the following interview, Justice discusses various aspects of his work, including his literary influences and the importance of memory, meter, and music in his poetry.

In the following essay, Logan analyzes the role of nostalgia in Justice's poems.

In the essay below, Gioia argues that Justice creates an intertextual dialogue in his poetry through his conscious borrowing from and response to other writers.

In the following essay, Bawer defends Justice's work against hostile critics, stating that the negative criticism stems from Justice's reluctance to conform to the styles of his peers.

In the following essay, which is prefaced by commentary from Harvey Gross, Justice discusses the function of meter in poetry.

Below, Richman argues that in Justice's poetry form takes precedence over subject matter.

In the essay below, De Jong discusses the significance of music to Justice's poetry, noting his use of rhyme, assonance, consonance, and repetition and the way in which music has served as subject or allegory in his poems.

From the beginning of his poetic career, Donald Justice has focused obsessively on a central theme: loss…. But it is not Justice's themes that first strike the reader on coming to the Selected Poems. It is the language itself, the particular idiom and pattern of the poems. While some poetry aims directly at arousing the feelings, Justice's poetry appeals to the feelings through the route of the intelligence. Form is present in an emphatic way—we notice the poem's structure...

In the following essay, Mezey praises the power of Justice's imagery and the seeming effortlessness with which it is evoked.

In the following excerpt, Ehrenpreis focuses on theme in Justice's collection Departures.

In the following excerpt, Gioai considers Selected Poems, citing Justice's mastery of diverse forms and keen editorial sense as the skills which have helped produce a nearly perfect collection of poetry.

I doubt if there are six poems in [Donald Justice's Selected Poems] which could be claimed for the public sensibility. But Justice has written a dozen lyrics I'd call virtually incomparable—of a kind rivaled only by W. S. Merwin or the early Merrill. And it's my sad duty to acknowledge that most were written fifteen or twenty years ago. Justice has lacked the gift for renewing himself poetically; however, the initial gift remains sufficiently impressive to inhibit critical reproa...

Donald Justice is a conservative poet. He works within the established boundaries of modern poetry and makes no attempt to extend those boundaries. He is also a very literary, academic poet: you do not need to be familiar with The Tempest to understand or take pleasure from Justice's poem, "Last Days of Prospero," but such a familiarity will deepen your understanding and increase your pleasure; a reading of the poem may even strengthen your appreciation of Shakespeare's play. Sel...

What some might see as proper formality might strike others as unnecessary stiffness. This difficulty is compounded in the case of Donald Justice, for his poetic sensibility can be seen as centered either in virtuous modesty or inescapable limitation. How you see Mr. Justice at this formal turning of his career depends a great deal on how urgently you feel about scale and subject in poetry. Mr. Justice's first book, "The Summer Anniversaries" (1960), deals mostly with a poetry of small ...

[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...

Donald Justice is an elusive poet, esteemed but not widely read, and it is a convenience to have so much of his work brought together in one volume [Selected Poems]…. Whatever the convenience, a new book by Justice is always likely to be a notable event; his output has been slight and infrequent, his work fastidious. In fact, as a poet he is that rarity—an artist at once deeply traditional and resolutely new fashioned. He sometimes writes (as in "Bus Stop") in an intentionally fl...

Donald Justice's [Selected Poems] persistently haunt and are haunted by the past, to the extent that their present is characterised by a weary passivity, a lack of vitality that is supported by fastidious formal elegance. They do not need to say that what happens now is pointless as there seems no likelihood of anything happening anyway…. The poems lack urgency from early on—typically motiveless sestinas, for example—with a habit of elegance which cushions meaning, and a lack of ...

[Selected Poems] is Justice at his best, as plain and poignant as he is fragmentary and narrow…. Consisting of shadows cast by the world just before dusk, his poetry is not the "bright shadow" that experience itself casts on the world. Justice does not aspire to be our Confessor; he confesses (touchingly, at his best) for himself…. [The] collection as a whole reflects an uncertain talent that has not been turned to much account. For one thing influence has been a problem. The ear...

There are a few obvious misfires in [The Summer Anniversaries] (the only disastrous one being the final poem, which is really too close to Auden to be taken seriously), but otherwise it is a most accomplished collection. There is a great deal to be thankful for in such [a poet as] Donald Justice. [His very modesty is part of his virtue. He is] humble before the tangible world, attempting to understand it at the same time as [he reproduces] it. It is a brave humility, too, much braver than the desire to do a...

Donald Justice has not improved since I reviewed Night Light a dozen years ago. [Selected Poems] reads like a very thin Tennessee Williams—little poems about obscure Florida people and architecture. And yet the words he chooses are the words he chooses; he really does want them, so the poems have that solidity. Each line is a sort of family portrait. That the poems as wholes haven't much energy doesn't matter much because his subjects are People Remembered (muffled by distance), and lan...

Mr. Justice writes a spare line, and he writes by the line, painstakingly. His determination to get the perfect word in the perfect place is absolute, and if he doesn't succeed every time, he does so often enough to make [Night Light] a remarkable book. His early poems were lyric and nostalgic. In a review of his first book [The Summer Anniversaries] I said, "The diction … is deceptively simple and spare, but rich in allusiveness." That remains true of the present collection but ...