SOURCE: Review of Poems. Atlantic Monthly VII, no. XLI (March 1861): 382.

In the following review, the critic concedes that although readers are accustomed to reading prose by Cooke, her poetry also elicits a favorable response.

We forget who it was that once charitably christened one of his volumes “Prose by a Poet,” in order that the public might be put on their guard as to the difference between it and the others,—inexperienced critics are so apt to make mistakes! The example seems to us worth following, and, were this dangerous frankness made a point of honor in title-pages, we should be able at a glance to distinguish the books that must be bought from those that may be read. We should then see advertised “The Ten-Inch Bore, or Sermons by Rev. Canon So-and-so,”—“Essays to do Good, by a Victim of Original Sin,”—“Poems by a Proser,”—“Political...