He had an early interest in French symbolists Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Valéry and provided translations of their work in his first volume of poetry. He also favoured American modernists like Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens. Other major influences include the Romantics poets, especially William Wordsworth and John Keats. Carl Jung was an early metaphysical influence and it was by way of Jung's commentaries on oriental texts that he discovered the 'Traditionalist' school of writers. He also immersed himself in Chinese art and poetry, and this determined the subject matter of his first published collection, "Phoenix Wings: Poems 1940-46" (1948). A later volume, "Orpheus and Other Poems" (1956), was strongly influenced by Jungian ideas.