Expertly made, varied in technique, superficially concerned with topics ranging from an eclipse of the sun to misfiled papers, the poems [in The City and the Island] are in fact all part of an examination of the differences between the public world and the private one. The island is a protean territory, shifting from individual imagination to the practice of art to the general graveyard of history; it is always lonely and sometimes terrifying. The city is no less alarming but not so chameleon in habit…. Both city and island are full of unexpected images and meanings that turn into other meanings, unforeseeable until Mr. Davison casually lifts a rug or a rock.

Phoebe-Lou Adams, in a review of "The City and the Island," in The Atlantic Monthly (copyright © 1966, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass.; reprinted with permission), Vol. 218, No. 6, December, 1966, p. 160.