SOURCE: "A Conscious Poetry of Secular Breadth," New York Times Book Review, November 21, 1948, p. 5.

In the following review of Terror and Decorum, Eberhart admires the "new complex of contemporary feelings" and the extent of the technical skills exhibited in Viereck's poetry.

Peter Viereck is primarily a poet of ideas. The ideas that have been flying around in his head for the past eight years find resolution in sporadic order. There's the rub: much tumult, much prestidigitation, variety of trials and effort, considerable learning, and the result is an uneven book of poems (Terror and Decorum) containing a good number of excellently realized pieces.

He challenges the reader with a new complex of contemporary feelings, presented in a vigorous play of growing and shifting attitudes. He synthesizes his experience in his own way, leaning both on traditional usages and on experimentation. He does not go back to social protest...