SOURCE: Brooks, Cleanth. “Reviews.” Poetry 66, no. 6 (September 1945): 324-29.

In the following review, Brooks praises the topicality and richness of the poems in The Winter Sea, contending that the collection “deserves to be read by every one seriously interested in modern poetry.”

It is impossible to review these poems without taking into account the topical references which they make, for the references are many and obvious—to Henry Wallace, to Van Wyck Brooks, to Pearl Harbor, to the fall of France. They reflect a world scene with which the reader is thoroughly familiar; but they stem from a point of view with which he is quite unfamiliar. The average reader—if he is fortunate enough to come upon a copy of this handsome, highly limited edition—will therefore be inclined to take it as a bitter and puzzling book, though, even so, he will in his bewilderment hardly escape...