SOURCE: Burt, Stephen. “Rifled Treasury.” Poetry Review 86, no. 2 (summer 1996): 297-306.

In the following review, Burt finds A Gilded Lapse of Time inferior to Schnackenberg's prior works.

Gjertrud Schnackenberg used to be above all a pleasant poet, one who combined high-culture learning, difficult forms (rhymed sapphics, villanelles) and reassuring accessibility; the American New Formalist critics of the 1980s accordingly celebrated her work, though some other readers found anthology-pieces like ‘Supernatural Love’ sugary or slight. Compared to that work, A Gilded Lapse of Time—published in America four years ago—is sprawling, unprotected and “difficult”, full of lengthy speculations on Italian Renaissance art and artists, the nature of God, the Roman Empire, and the risen Christ. Schnackenberg is sincere, serious, and devoted: the trouble is that the quality of the writing has plummeted. Here is half of section 17 of the 20-section title poem, a hallucinatory pilgrimage-cum-art tour through Ravenna: the...