Response
In a review of the book in The New York Times, Charles Poore praised the book, writing, "The Mills of the Kavanaughs. . . is a fine new collection of poems in angular, stony meters, sometimes as obscure as one end of an overheard telephone conversation, always savagely brilliant in their hard impact on the mind."
However, Randall Jarrell's review of the book in Partisan Review was much more measured in its assessment. Although Jarrell liked the handful of shorter poems in the collection, he was critical of the main characters in the epic, title poem, writing, "The people too often seem to be acting in the manner of Robert Lowell, rather than plausibly as real people act . . .I doubt that many readers will think them real."
The Poetry Foundation website notes that The Mills of the Kavanaughs was "less successful" than Lowell's previous book, Lord Weary's Castle, which had won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
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