SOURCE: "Macleish and Viereck," Partisan Review, Vol. XX, No. 1, January-February 1953, pp. 115-120.

In the following excerpt from a review, Nemerov describes The First Morning as an uneven mixture of "witty and ingenious poems " with a large quantity of mediocre work.

The poet's responsibility to society…a matter much debated. In the phrase itself there is implicit some prospective metaphor of the poet as criminal, vainly trying to discharge his debt by means of his poems while all the time, really, it is something else that "society" wants. What? This has not been made clear, but seems to have confusedly to do with, on the one hand, messages of life and hope; with, on the other, moral earnestness and a severe, traditional look at current events. Archibald MacLeish takes in many places a severe view—with virtue, with this Republic, with poetry itself, things were formerly different, are now...