Notable book reviews provide a reasonably accurate gauge of the public response to Patchen's work when it was initially published. For instance, Patchen biographer Larry Smith notes that " initial reception to Patchen's "First Will & Testament" was positive and strong." Smith notes that a reviewer from the "New Republic" compared the book to T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land." The book was also praised in reviews by Louis Untermeyer and John Peale Bishop. However, it received a notably negative review by Delmore Schwartz in "Partisan Review". Following this first negative review, Schwartz would remain one of Patchen's fiercest critics.