“The vigor, the individuality, the natural sources of growth and development in his work, deserve the first word. Mr Benet’s limitations in making the renaissance, in its essence, live again are inherent in his method and approach. There was a roundness of gesture in these years which is missed by nervous actions and pouncing words.” Geoffrey Parsons
+ − N Y Evening Post p8 Ja 8 ’21 720w
“In ‘Moons of grandeur’ he includes ten such poems that may be ranked among quite the best things he has done. It is apparent in this book that he has grown greatly in stature as a poet. An extravagance that was once fatal to him as an artist at times has been finely curbed and turned into channels where it becomes a virtue.” H. S. Gorman
+ N Y Times p11 Ja 9 ’21 480w
“Mr Benet’s poems possess the essential qualities of beauty and imagination.”
+ Review 3:419 N 3 ’20 10w
“In these pictures of renaissance Italy Mr Benet proves his possession of rhythm, of knowledge, of an allusiveness as ingathering as a scythe, of energy, of a lambent and vibrant picturesqueness, of the gait and swing, if not the soul, of passion. ‘Moons of grandeur,’ with all its attractions, errs somewhat in the obscuration of the rhyme.”
+ − Review 3:654 D 29 ’20 290w
BENET, WILLIAM ROSE. Perpetual light. *$1.35 Yale univ. press 811
19–25952