No softness enters the work of Miss Glück. None of the personae she adopts in Firstborn … speaks gently or regards the world kindly. Her vision is harsh, her verse forms terse and stripped to essentials. In point of view and accomplishment these poems give no evidence of being the work of a young writer, and while it would be difficult to talk about liking these descriptions of a crippled, pathetic, and brutal world, it would be impossible to deny their effective and honest confrontation with reality. From her opening image of "lice rooted in that baby's hair," through her "Pictures of the People in the War," to her very brief narrative about the boarding of a slave ship to steal its gold and slaughter its "living cargo," Miss Glück demands a reader's attention and commands his respect. (p. 33)

Robert D. Spector, "Lyrics, Heroic and Otherwise," in...