Critics have not paid much attention to "For Jennifer, 6, on the Teton," but they have addressed What Thou Lovest Well, Remains American. In The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Bob Group notes the book's organization into three parts, arguing the "sections roughly conform to the poet's boyhood past, his recent experiences, and speculations on the future, as if the author is codifying and organizing his perceptions in preparation for some new departure." Other critics develop Group's point. Donna Gerstenberger, in her study, Richard Hugo, while praising the collection, sees it as Hugo's "exploration toward the acceptance of the self that is." Michael Allen agrees. In his critical study, We Are Called Human: The Poetry of Richard Hugo, Allen calls What Thou Lovest Well, Remains American a "crucial" book, writing that the primary theme of the poems

is the working out of, and the working against, regression,
that...