“With this volume Mr Lindsay certainly regains all he seems to have lost in his previous collection, and he now settles permanently in the very forefront of the half a dozen contemporary poets whose fame will last beyond the generation in which they were born.” W. S. B.
+ Boston Transcript p10 Ap 17 ’20 1500w Cleveland p52 My ’20 100w
“Two impulses dominate Lindsay’s latest volume; two tendencies that are almost opposed in mood and mechanics. Sometimes the Jerusalem theme is uppermost; sometimes the jazz orchestration drowns everything else. Frequently, in the more successful pieces, there is a racy, ragtime blend of both. But a half-ethical, half-aesthetic indecision, an inability to choose between what most delights Lindsay and what his hearers prefer is the outstanding effect—and defect—of his new collection.” L: Untermeyer
+ − Dial 68:789 Je ’20 1200w
“There is an impression abroad that ‘The golden whales’ falls a little below ‘General William Booth,’ ‘The Congo,’ and ‘The Santa Fe trail.’ It does do that; yet it stands well up among Mr Lindsay’s better poems, which is to say, among the better poems of contemporary America.” M. V. D.
+ Nation 110:856 Je 26 ’20 350w
“In this volume it is poems like Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan and Kalamazoo and The golden whales and The comet of prophecy and My lady is compared to a young tree and The statue of old Andrew Jackson and the Roosevelt poems and the Alexander Campbell poems which show the increasing self-possession of a singer who really lives with wonder and abides with dreams. The fascination of Lindsay is that this wonder and these dreams are drawn from common American life.” F. H.
+ − New Repub 21:321 F 11 ’20 1300w
“‘The golden whales’ is a book thoroughly alive, thoroughly jolly and thoroughly fit for chanting in typical Vachelese. His idiom, as well as his whimsical exaggeration, roars on every page.” Clement Wood
+ N Y Call p10 My 23 ’20 400w