“What one has here in the end is Bynner, the man, rather than Bynner, the poet. He is a delightful man, clever and keen and kind. But he is too full of his message to be truly moving.” E. P.
+ − Dial 70:109 Ja ’21 120w
“Witter Bynner forfeits our respect at the outset by writing a canticle wherein he imagines Pan and the Christ child as friends; he continues to forfeit it by a vein of breezy, Vachel Lindsay-Stephen Graham optimism that runs through his book.” J: G. Fletcher
− Freeman 1:476 Jl 28 ’20 230w
“These canticles as well as some of the less ambitious poems are marred by an ethical idealism that is too self-conscious. Pan and Bacchus especially must not moralize. Their magic is their waywardness. The best poems in the book are the slighter ones, including the bits of translation from the Chinese, Japanese and Russian and the original poems in their spirit.” C. M. S.
+ − Grinnell R 15:283 N ’20 300w + Ind 104:246 N 13 ’20 110w
“Mr Bynner’s latest volume proves, among other things, that there are limits beyond which Mr Bynner cannot be said to gain by experimentation. Not that he has a still, small voice; not that he is a little poet; but he is most himself and most happy when he is working in established, or at least in well knit, rhythms and moods. His publisher has produced him in a form that does both American poetry and American publishing handsome credit.” M. V. D.
+ − Nation 110:856 Je 26 ’20 230w
“Witter Bynner’s new volume, ‘A canticle of Pan’ leaves one disturbed and aggrieved. He is undeniably such a really talented poet that one wonders why so much of his book leaps out of the mind much faster than it leaps in. It is apparent that the community masque idea is not a happy choice for Mr Bynner. It is in the shorter pieces in this book that Mr Bynner is at his best.” H. S. Gorman
+ − N Y Times 25:18 Jl 25 ’20 450w