SOURCE: “Child of This World,” in Parnassus, Vol. 11, No. 2, Fall/Winter 1983–Spring/Summer 1984, pp. 302–17.

In the following review of A Company of Poets, People Live Here, and The Best Hour of the Night, Flint discusses Simpson's place among postwar American poets and examines the defining characteristics and development of his thematic concerns and poetic style.

The final test of a poet with legitimate claims to being a master of the speaking voice might be a verbatim transcription from his Index of First Lines. Let me turn to page 211 of People Live Here and see how this works for Louis Simpson.

A bell and rattle, After midnight when the presses were rolling A guitar and drum, A hot summer night on Water Street— A light is on in my father's study. All he needed was fifty cents A man stood in the laurel tree And I, who used to...