SOURCE: "Two 'New Poets' and Their War Poems as Mr. Drinkwater Sees Them," in The New York Times Book Review, May 9, 1920, pp. 235, 246.

In the excerpt below, Drinkwater reviews Picture Show and questions whether war poetry can be judged by those who have not shared in the poet's wartime experiences. He also argues that Sassoon's strong emotions sometimes weaken the quality of his work, but the critic finds that the volume's best poems are "the creation of a loving and aristocratic art."

There is an element, and, on the face of it, a very important one, in Mr. Sassoon's poetry, to which critical approach is of extreme difficulty. Rightly understood, it is the expressive part of poetry rather than the thing expressed that stimulates our mind, quickening our own perceptive faculty. Blake's sublime naturalism, Marvell's lucid intellectual passion, the romance of Morris, Crabbe's austerity—the mood of one stands...