SOURCE: "The Long Way to MacDiarmid," in Poetry, Vol. 88, 1956, pp. 52-61.

In the following excerpt, Berryman provides a primarily positive review of Another Animal.

[May Swenson is described] on the jacket [of Another Animal] as having come from Utah "to New York City where she holds an active job." One looks to the next sentence to hear what this may be. No: "Her poems have appeared" etc. It is hard to know whether to be pleased that she holds an active job, or sorry, for an inactive job is surely better for a poet. The difficulties in communication with which modern poetry is charged have reached the jackets. The energy of her versemaking, though, suggests that the job can hardly be too active for her; her first selection is as long as Harry Duncan's and Murray Noss's together, and franker, and more experimental, and vervier. She splits her...