During the United States' Formalist period in literature, American writers admired Villa's work. Mark Van Doren wrote in reaction to "Selected Poems and New" that it is "...So natural yet in its daring so weird, a poet rich and surprising, and not to be ignored". Babette Deutsch wrote in "The New Republic" that "Have Come, Am Here" reveals that Villa's concern for "ultimate things, the self and the universe. He is also on visiting terms with the world. He is more interested in himself than in the universe, and he greets the world with but a decent urbanity." Although she viewed Villa's range as somewhat narrow, he "soars high and plunges deep". British poet Edith Sitwell revealed in the preface of Villa's "Selected Poems and New" that she experienced "a shock" upon reading "Have Come, Am Here", most notably the poem "#57", "a strange poem of ineffable beauty, springing straight from the depths of Being. I hold that this is one of the most wonderful short poems of our time, and reading it I knew that I was seeing for the first time the work of a poet with a great, even an astonishing, and perfectly original gift." Meanwhile, noted American poet Garret Hongo described Villa as "one of the greatest pioneers of Asian American literature...our bitter, narcissistic angel of both late Modernism and early post-colonialism." In his introduction to "Footnote to Youth", American writer Edward J. O'Brien—who dedicated his collection "Best American Short Stories of 1932" to Villa—hailed the poet as "one of a half-dozen American short-story writers who count". Meanwhile, in reaction to Villa's poems, e.e. cummings wrote, "and i am alive to see a man against the sky".