 Despite general agreement that it is indebted to Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus", there is uncertainty about the nature of the debt.Helen Vendler takes it as obvious that the poem is about "our impoverished American Venus, who has none of the trappings of Botticelli's Venus, but who will eventually accumulate aura and mythological fullness through new American art".She dismisses the English poet Craig Raine's identification of the paltry nude with a sailboat.