Berryman published some of this early verse in his first book, "Poems", in 1942. His first mature collection of poems, "The Dispossessed", appeared six years later, published by William Sloane Associates. The book received largely negative reviews from poets like Jarrell, who wrote, in "The Nation", that Berryman was "a complicated, nervous, and intelligent " whose work was too derivative of W. B. Yeats. Berryman later concurred with this assessment of his early work, saying, "I didn't want to be "like" Yeats; I wanted to "be" Yeats."