In the following essay, Stitt provides an overview of Simpson's poetic development, his American sensibility, his thematic preoccupation with ordinary American experience and social alienation, and his aesthetic and stylistic approach to poetry.

In the following interview, originally conducted in 1980, Simpson discusses his formative influences, his approach to writing poetry, his artistic aims and thematic concern with ordinary experience, and his views on contemporary American poetry.

In the following essay, originally published in 1983, Lazer examines Simpson's assimilation of Whitman's poetic themes, style, and voice, and Simpson's subsequent effort to come to terms with Whitman's influence after rejecting his overly idealized vision of America.

In the following review of A Company of Poets, People Live Here, and The Best Hour of the Night, Flint discusses Simpson's place among postwar American poets and examines the defining characteristics and development of his thematic concerns and poetic style.

In the following essay, originally published in three separate sections in 1958, 1960, and 1976, respectively, Bly praises the power and sensitivity of Simpson's verse, particularly in dealing with World War II, but cites shortcomings in his choice of traditional forms and attachment to certain quotidian subjects.

In the following review, Mason praises Simpson's war poems and his memoir, The King My Father's Wreck, but finds shortcomings in Ships Going into the Blue and Simpson's later poetry.

In the following review, McDowell offers a positive assessment of Simpson's Collected Poems and praises Simpson's contribution to American poetry.

In the following review, originally published in 1981, Makuck offers a positive assessment of Caviare at the Funeral.

In a recent Georgia Review [see excerpt above], Peter Stitt writes that Louis Simpson's People Live Here: Selected Poems 1949–1983 "makes clear that there are three major phases to be found in the body of Simpson's work, phases which are separated by major changes in style, subject matter, and approach." Simpson is certainly one of those poets (like James Wright, Robert Penn Warren, Robert Lowell, and Elizabeth Bishop, to name only a few other such writers of recent vintag...

In the following review, Beaver discusses the evolution of Simpson's distinct poetic voice and aesthetic approach—as evident in Collected Poems and Selected Prose—and offers a favorable assessment of Simpson's mature work in There You Are and The King My Father's Wreck.

The simultaneous publication of these two books—People Live Here: Selected Poems 1949–1983 and The Best Hour of the Night—offers the opportunity for both a retrospective view of the career of Louis Simpson and an assessment of his maturest and most characteristic work. People Live Here, which is based upon seven separate earlier volumes, makes clear that there are three major phases to be found in the body of Simpson's work, phases which are separated by major changes in style, s...

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

In the following review, originally published in 1980, Nepo commends Simpson's analysis of Imagism in Three on the Tower.

In the following excerpt, Wakoski addresses Simpson's detached intelligence and effort to embrace common American experience, as reflected in Collected Poems.

In 1967, M. L. Rosenthal, in The New Poets, described a number of poets he found to have some tenuous connection with Robert Bly's The Sixties and said of them "… this group, which includes Robert Bly, Donald Hall, Louis Simpson, James Wright, and James Dickey, is seeking to affect the aims of American poetry…." (p. 10) More than two decades have passed since the first books of these poets appeared and though it is still unclear that any of their names will name the litera...

In the following excerpt, Gwynn offers a positive assessment of Ships Going into the Blue.

In the following review, originally published in 1964, Locke addresses Simpson's change of style and focus in At the End of the Open Road.

Over the years, one has often been tempted to ask, "Will the real Louis Simpson please stand up?" For there have been several. There was the correct but amazingly precocious young Briton from Jamaica, the coeditor of "New Poets of England and America," a few of whose poems are preserved in the opening sections of "People Live Here." There was the brief but shrill convert to the school of Robert Bly. There was the author of critical books like "A Revolution in...

Many years ago in my reading I was shopping for a good contemporary lyric poet. I had trouble finding what I was looking for until a friend recommended the poems of Louis Simpson. "The best we've got," he said. People Live Here includes more than 100 poems from the author's ten previous books and chapbooks, and from recent uncollected poems. Also included is an afterword by Simpson himself, "The Sake of Words for Their Own Sake." This latter piece consists of a char...

Having been from the beginning an admirably "impure" poet (to borrow Czeslaw Milosz's sly term for Whitman, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, et al., as opposed to those modern poets who aspire to an art of "pure" imagination), Simpson has taken on the challenge of trying to make sense of contemporary life, from his soldiering experiences in World War II to American historical myths and realities—wherein "The Open Road goes to the used-car lot." Increasingly,...

In the following review, Pratt offers a positive assessment of The Character of the Poet.

At a minimum, incisive poets may serve [their] era by suggesting some levels of personal good sense relative to certain senseless, impersonal realities. Further to the point, the right poet's eye can fire mysteries in both extreme and ordinary events. Such aspects of the art connect with the modern poet's secret goal to establish a private foothold of authority, what John Berryman called "imperial sway," or that which Wallace Stevens understood as "a sensible ecstasy.�...

In the following excerpt, Lucas offers a positive assessment of People Live Here.

Louis Simpson's poems in Caviare at the Funeral are typically narrative; they are also typically brief, none going beyond a few pages. The poet hasn't made things easy for himself. Telling stories in verse is a demanding procedure because many of the features we appreciate in prose fiction—a sense of events spawning events, of characters developing or disintegrating, days passing into days—are seemingly at odds with the compactness of poetry. It has been often observed that poems...

In the following excerpt, Breslin offers a positive assessment of The Best Hour of the Night.

The astonishing thing about Caviare at the Funeral is its radical presentation of American life. It has long seemed to me that Louis Simpson is among the most American of all American poets. Somehow the fact that he was born and raised in Jamaica and came to this country only in his eighteenth year has enabled him to see us, our land and our ways, with unusually clear vision. His earlier work, especially in At the End of the Open Road, shows an understanding of America rarely seen…. In Caviare at the...

In the following review, Burt offers a negative assessment of Ships Going into the Blue.

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

In the following review, Ringold offers a positive assessment of The Best Hour of the Night.

In the following excerpt, Mackinnon offers an unfavorable assessment of In the Room We Share.

In the following review, Pratt offers a mixed assessment of Ships Going into the Blue, finding the collection “uneven, sometimes whimsical, but often provocative.”

Louis Simpson once wrote that 'The Open Road goes to the used-car lot.' It doesn't any more. It goes to a suburban cul-de-sac where:      Most people are content     to make a decent living.     They take pride in their homes and raising a family.     The women attend meetings at the PTA …   �...

In the following review, Brown offers a positive assessment of In the Room We Share.

In the following review, Brown offers a positive assessment of Simpson's Selected Prose.