In her lifetime, Wylie garnered notoriety for her unconventional private life and acclaim for her poems and novels. She was considered one of the most distinguished American poets of the 1920s. Though her literary career lasted only eight years, she was recognized as an extremely adept, accomplished author. Wylie's poetry is marked by a lively inventiveness, a subtle treatment of emotion, and a detached sensibility that Louis Untermeyer has described as "a passion frozen at its source."