SOURCE: "Two Intellectuals," in The New Criterion, Vol. IV, No. I, January, 1926, pp. 205-8.

In the following review, Wolfe identifies the strengths of Muir's early poems.

The poetry of restraint, of emotional repression has in the last few years received notable adherents. The birth of this movement has been in the main Transatlantic, and may perhaps be attributed to a conscious reaction against the excessive sweetness in the American tradition. There have been two distinct attacks on literary easiness. With Ezra Pound, H.D., and the Imagists a resolute offensive was delivered on form. An attempt, not wholly unsuccessful, was made to prove that normal metrical tricks were unnecessary, and that poetry, when unadorned, was most adorned. Dullards, who did not recognise the exquisite balances in Pound's verse, reduced his discovery to babble, and we were presented by some of his followers with poetry not merely naked, but...