[The Knotting Sequence is] rooted in a landscape: the hamlet of Knotting, where [Mr. Booth] lives. The first half of the book explores his feelings towards this landscape through the persona of the hamlet's Anglo-Saxon founder, Cnot….

Cnot is too shadowy a figure, and too limited in metaphor and suggestiveness, to be able to sustain a fairly long sequence with undiminished energy, with the result that some of the poems seem slight affairs; one, for example, is built around a weak pun: "sorrow's/a marriage of/good and/sad he/said …". I am not sorry when Cnot vanishes and Mr. Booth can turn to the living landscape and its seasons, its small births and deaths, and these he describes beautifully, in controlled, strong, haiku-like poems…. [The Knotting Sequence] is a stage in the development of a genuine poet. (p. 66)

D. M. Thomas, in The Times Literary Supplement...