SOURCE: Baressi, Dorothy. “Seeing Divine.” Parnassus: Poetry in Review 18, no. 2 and 19, no. 1 (fall 1993): 296-315.

In the following excerpt, Baressi praises A Gilded Lapse of Time but sometimes finds sincere emotion and meaning sacrificed for concept and allusion at critical moments in the work.

With her second book, The Lamplit Answer (1982), Gjertrud Schnackenberg secured a place for herself among the so-called “New Formalists,” a title made meaningless by overuse and the notion, misconceived, that poetry had ever been, or could ever be, anything less than “formal.” Of course the reign of “free verse” poetry in the academy set the stage for such misapplied, largely political distinctions and the nasty battles of dogma that have followed, but all verse is by its very nature form-concerned. Schnackenberg's particular experiment and proficiency with received forms, set metrics, and end rhyme distinguished The Lamplit Answer for specific reasons, not the least of which...