“Miss Cromwell was not one of those young poets who accept without question the traditionally ‘poetic’ themes and prattle, without a sign of conviction, of love and springtime and the picturesque beauties of nature. She wrote of real spiritual experiences, of what she had herself thought and felt.”
+ Ath p289 F 27 ’20 140w
“In the group here entitled ‘Later poems’—the closing record of two very noble and fervid lives brought to a tragic end—there is nearly always a stark and shining strength in which a certain calm sweetness is not utterly without its part.” H: A. Lappin
+ Bookm 51:216 Ap ’20 220w + Cleveland p73 Ag ’20 150w
“The poems of the unfortunate Gladys Cromwell betray the hidden thing that wrecked her career. One sees, in practically all of her poems, a fear of this life that is a kaleidoscope of beauty, belligerence, and bestiality. The inability to adjust herself to an insecure and chaotic world is manifested even in her earlier poems which contain some of her finest lyrics. In poems like The mould, Definition, Dominion, and Choice she seems a tentative and somewhat frailer Emily Dickinson, with a less incisive and more indirect idiom.” L: Untermeyer
+ − Dial 68:534 Ap ’20 180w + Ind 103:54 Jl 10 ’20 300w
“The work of a finely thoughtful woman whom the spectacle of sheer, naked cleverness and successfulness hurt, it represents feminine introspection almost at its best.” M. V. D.
+ Nation 111:247 Ag 28 ’20 150w
“It is the cumulative effect of the collection that is most remarkable. As one reads on, the book develops a unity that is more than a unity of texture or of inspiration. It achieves an eloquence,—superseding the poet’s earlier constraint—that seems almost to deepen the lyric sequence to the additional significance of a monodrama.” O. R.
+ New Repub 22:65 Mr 10 ’20 1000w