SOURCE: "Some Recent Poetry," Yale Review, Vol. 40, No. 2, Winter, 1951, pp. 353-354.

In the following review, Daiches finds Strike through the Mask! disappointing in comparison to Terror and Decorum, but praises Viereck for his continued struggle to realize his poetic vision.

If Strike Through the Mask! is a trifle disappointing, it is only because Viereck's first volume was so good. There is nothing here quite so good as the best in Terror and Decorum, yet in such poems as "Ennui" and the third part of "Some Lines in Three Parts," for example, we have the same cunning clarity of style and classical sense of form that so refreshed us in the earlier poems. Mr. Viereck affects what one might call a desperate clarity, a wild matter-of-factness which at its best can be employed for more subtle effects than those achieved by the more obvious kinds of obscurity. He bodies...