SOURCE: A review of “Poems,” in Saturday Review, Vol. XXIV, No. 13, July 19, 1941.

In the following excerpt, Untermeyer reviews Torrence's last book of poems, and puzzles over his slender output.

The case of Ridgely Torrence is one of the most puzzling in modern poetry. His first volume appeared at the very beginning of the century, and it was immediately evident that Torrence promised more than most of his contemporaries. But twenty-five years passed before his second book, Hesperides, was published. Another sixteen years have brought Poems, which is a reissue of Hesperides with the addition of some new poems. The volume presents a continuing problem a conflict without solution. On the negative side there is the question of power withheld or diminished, the creative energy dissipated, the expectation unfulfilled. Born in the same year as Robert Frost, a little younger than Edwin Arlington Robinson and Amy Lowell, Torrence (so...