The style of W. D. Snodgrass is not consistent enough to be readily categrorized, and I am at a loss to account for his title, In Radical Pursuit. In a few essays, but not many, Snodgrass may be the pupil of, say, Ernest Jones. (p. xc)

In Radical Pursuit begins with "Four Personal Lectures" about contemporary poetry in general, and large parts of them concern the development of Snodgrass's own work…. Rightly defined, irony, in Brooks & Company's extended use of the term, is markedly similar to what Snodgrass praises as tact, in his essay "Tact and the Poet's Force." (pp. xci-xcii)

Six of the other essays in this collection plod their way through Roethke, Ransom …, Lawrence's "Rocking-Horse Winner," A Midsummer Night's Dream, Don Quixote, and the Inferno. I except the pieces on Crime and Punishment and on the gods in the Iliad, both of which quickened my interest...