Donald Hall is another of the men-about-Parnassus … which makes it all the more surprising that in the central poems of A Blue Wing Tilts at the Edge of the Sea, four long sequences concerned with a love affair in middle age, he should show such calamitous lack of judgment. For every passage that rings true, is another that turns sickly, and a third that crassly exploits the delicate ironies of love in later years. Ingenuity outpaces feeling, except for a few opening poems and the last section of the book, where Mr Hall brings just the right degree of invention to bear on some quiet memories and observations…. (p. 960)
Roger Garfitt in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1975; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), August 29, 1975.
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