Donald Davie's new collection [In the Stopping Train] is as nicely fashioned as ever before. His title poem is more subfusc than usual, a sombre but firm performance. It's characteristic of Davie's styles that his poems move neatly to their clinching lines without assuming too much that they should do so. Indeed, his manner is more properly relaxed in In the Stopping Train than it was in The Shires, where it was relaxed into a state of suave chat. There are five more poems to add to the Shires series, one of them, "Bedfordshire", being perhaps the best of the lot. (pp. 82-3)
[Davie's] points of reference are self-consciously cultural and social. He conducts arguments. A number of his poems in his new book proceed first by asking a question, then answering it, then moving forward until the next question is reached, followed by its answer, followed by moving forward again. The method mimics a state of mind suspicious of bold manoeuvres, of anything unreasonable, intemperate or seemingly immoderate. If he was to imagine something, or speculate, he would tell us first. He wouldn't want to think he was going off his own rails. There is of course an assumption of plain honesty in that manner. But there are times, too, when it looks like a greater degree of circumspection than poetry encourages. His poems strike me as conditioned by criticism of poetry, a phenomenon of the mid-20th century. If there is an academic poetry, this is it.
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