SOURCE: "Question of Strategy," in Poetry (Chicago), Vol. LXXI, No. 11, November, 1947, pp. 94-7.

In the following mixed review of The Image and the Law, Golffing questions the dichotomy between images and ideas in the volume.

Mr. Nemerov tells us—on the dust-jacket [of The Image and the Law], of all places—that he dichotomizes the "poetry of the eye" and the "poetry of the mind," and that he attempts to exhibit in his verse the "ever-present dispute between two ways of looking at the world." Though usually skeptical of programmatic statements, I find this particular one quite serviceable as a clue—a "way in"—to the plexus of Nemerov's poetry.

The dichotomy itself is fashionable, and it is peculiar. It has almost assumed the status of doctrine in the work of Wallace Stevens, who disassociates mind and eye while paying homage to both, and in the work of...