"Jarrell highlights "Colloquy in Black Rock," "Between the Porch and the Altar," "The Death of the Sheriff," and "Where the Rainbow Ends" as some of the best poems in the book.In a review of the book for "The New Yorker", the poet Louise Bogan characterized Lowell's style as "a high pitch of baroque intensity" and compared his writing to the work of John Donne and Herman Melville, adding that " [Lowell's literary] gifts are of a special kind."