Critics Speak on Eli Siegel’s Work

William Carlos Williams

Something to Say, ed. J.E.B. Breslin, New Directions, NY, 1951

• “I can’t tell you how important Siegel’s work is in the light of my present understanding of the modern poem. He belongs in the very first rank of our living artists…”

Kenneth Rexroth

New York Times, 1969

• “I think it’s about time Eli Siegel was moved up into the ranks of our acknowledged Leading Poets….His translations of Baudelaire and his commentaries on them rank him with the most understanding of the Baudelaire critics in any language.”

Selden Rodman

Saturday Review, August 17, 1957

• “He comes up with poems…which say more (and more movingly) about here and now than any contemporary poems I have read…”

Ellen Reiss

The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, #1290, December 24, 1997

• On a Series of Eli Siegel’s Poems titled “The Persistence of Fabric.”

Walter Leuba

New Mexico Quarterly, August 17, 1957

• Whole in Brightness

William Packard

newsART—The Smith

• “I believe The Nation exercised rare good judgment in awarding its poetry prize to ‘Hot Afternoons.’ This is a remarkably original long poem…”