The quality of Roy Fuller's Collected Poems must make any honest reviewer ask himself once more what truly relevant comment he can offer. To say what sort of poetry it is is not to convey its excellences….

[Fuller's] standing as a poet is one of the two or three highest of those now writing. Yet his reputation is mainly among poets and readers of poetry. The professional critics, busy with estimates of Pound, have scarcely looked at him. His name does not ring glamorously round the campuses—and this alone is enough for us to write off completely all fashionable American opinion about British verse.

This American neglect is even odder when one considers that Fuller is in effect doing what Wallace Stevens tried to do, failing because of a streak of frivolity and dilettantism, and perhaps for lack of an adequate rhythmic sense too. For Fuller's humanism...