In 1983 Alfred A. Knopf published a volume of poems by a little-known poet then past sixty years old. Titled The Kingfisher, this collection was praised (on the dust jacket) by Richard Wilbur as "extr...
Read more
Critical Essay by Helen Vendler
Amy Clampitt writes a beautiful, taxing poetry. In it, thinking uncoils and coils again, embodying its perpetual argument with itself. The mind that composes these poe...
Read more
Critical Essay by Paul A. Olson
The Kingfisher is a book of tough stuff, full of dirt and doctrine. Since dirt and doctrine are the stuff of Great Plains Poetry and literature in the medieval period ...
Read more
Critical Essay by Edmund White
Amy Clampitt, who has just made one of the most brilliant debuts in recent American literary history, can do everything with words but tell a story—and stories a...
Read more
Critical Essay by Richard Howard
Of these 50 poems [in The Kingfisher], 14 have appeared in The New Yorker, consecrated there by the most fastidious editorial taste now (and for the last 25 years) op...
Read more
Critical Essay by Peter Stitt
The Kingfisher is Clampitt's first volume, in many ways an almost dazzling performance. (p. 430)
The interlocking of vowel and consonant sounds is as impressiv...
Read more
Critical Essay by Richard Tillinghast
It is hard to think of any poet who has written as well about the natural world as Amy Clampitt does. "The Kingfisher" opens with nine splendid poe...
Read more
Critical Essay by Peter Porter
Amy Clampitt is in the line of remarkable American women poets—Emily Dickinson (see Ms Clampitt's 'Lindenbloom'), Marianne Moore and Elizabe...
Read more
In this brief review of The Kingfisher, McCIatchy comments on Clampitt's similarities to Marianne Moore, especially in their use of language, their exuberance, and their moralism.
"It...
Read more
In this essay, Morrisroe credits Clampitt's poetry with the power to turn the everyday into the magical through its powerful, evocative language.
"It's all very strange,"...
Read more
In this review of What the Light Was Like, Gilbert criticizes Clampitt's obvious and, in her opinion, tedious use of literary references and excessively poetic phrasing.
Especially on the Ea...
Read more
In the excerpt below, McClatchy explores Clampitt's poetic voice, especially her use of literary allusions and the themes of death and completion.
When Amy Clampitt's The Kingfisher w...
Read more
In his review of Westward, Morrison attributes Clampitt's appeal to English readers to her attention to detail, her willingness to include the Old World and its history, and her search for emot...
Read more
In this review of Westward, Vendler examines Clampitt's use of landscape as a means "to resolve questions of sexual identity, of unsatisfactory family relations, of the expectations of s...
Read more
In this essay, Clampitt recalls her initial lack of self-assurance and reflects upon the development of her poetic voice.
By the time I graduated from high school I had discovered the poems of Edna...
Read more
In the following review of A Silence Opens, Pettingell discusses the importance of history in Clampitt's poetry.
Can it really be only eleven years ago that readers of poetry discovered Amy ...
Read more
In the following review of A Silence Opens, Shaw praises Clampitt's ability to impose an order upon the multitude of small details that leads the reader to the poem's moral message.
A...
Read more
Amy Clampitt
Critical Essay by Helen Vendler
