Stated briefly, the problems which have so far bewildered Pratt critics are two: the first, what is his poetry about, and the second, what world-view does this poetry project?… [The obvious answers are] that Pratt's subject matter may be no more than the stories he tells and that his vision may be no more than the values which his protagonists embody. A careful reading of Pratt's work, in fact, suggests very strongly that Pratt was much more straightforward as an artist than most of his sophisticated critics would care to admit. He seems seldom to have been concerned with such profound questions as can easily be raised by too analytical an approach to his work. (pp. 54-5)

Although [some] ambiguities in Pratt's work can be easily resolved if considered as peripheral to one simple and pervasive idea in Pratt, his critics have been thrown by them into confusion...