Poetry. California Interest. The New Yorker calls his poetry, "Expressive, gestural, and image laden, St. John's lines fairly hum with the pleasure of their making." W. S. Merwin identifies St. John's work as that of "...an urgent sensibility and a true ear." And John Ashbery writes, "Like the films of Godard and Rohmer, David St. John's poems evoke cryptic encounters in an unltramodern, often European setting. The mood is one of pain, tension, and urgency, but there is finally the experience and pleasure of what Mr. St. John calls 'the most graceful of misunderstandings.'"