[John Ciardi's] war poems generally, and his love poems and political and satirical pieces, make him a graphic spokesman for the liberal and literate mind today, a mind in touch with earthy reality and even a certain redeeming crudeness, and also alive to the world of thought. (p. 250)

M. L. Rosenthal, in his The Modern Poets: A Critical Introduction (copyright © 1960 by M. L. Rosenthal; reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.), Oxford University Press, 1960.