SOURCE: “Fashions,” in The Nation (New York), Vol. 112, No. 2914, May 11, 1921, p. 693.

In the following review of Spicewood, Van Doren finds Reese's work too ordered and lacking in force.

When Jessie B. Rittenhouse in 1904 wrote sketches of eighteen “Younger American Poets” she put Miss Reese in the second place as one who was mistress of a certain poignant primness, as one who was a feminine Robert Herrick. The quality implied in the comparison was debatable then and is more debatable now. Miss Reese's sonnets and quatrain-songs are impeccable in meter and phrasing, are irreproachable in sentiment; but they lack original salt. Their edges are frilled and lavendered, while their central designs are woven of gentle archaisms—“nowhit,” “of a surety,” “this many a year,” “hushes where the lonely are,” “all palely sweet,” “candlelight,” “wayfarer,” “deem”—which Herrick did not or would not now employ. A little conscious archness in...