SOURCE: "The Poetry of Louise Bogan," in The New Republic, Vol. LX, No. 776, October 16, 1929, pp. 247–48.

Winters was a prominent American poet and critic whose works evince his conviction that all good literature necessarily serves a conscious moral purpose. In his first critical study, Primitivism and Decadence (1937), Winters outlined this principle, asserting that a poem's success lies in its ability to express a strong moral thesis through a combination of rhythm, emotion, and motivation. In the following review of Dark Summer, he assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Bogan's poetry.

This [Dark Summer] Miss Bogan's second volume, includes the best poems from her first, so that a reading of it offers a complete view of her talent to the present time. The chief stylistic influence discernible is that of E. A. Robinson, and that only here and there. Two of the early poems reprinted in this book—"Portrait" and...