[Reality] is Michael Hamburger's theme, and he seriously confronts it in his title poem [in Real Estate] about almost but not quite buying an old house where the 'pure idea of dwelling' seems 'too real for us to meddle with'. All through this book Hamburger explores the endemic dilemmas of the bourgeois poet: what to have, what to dream about, what to kill, what to keep in the garden? This is a thoughtful book by a poet who is more personal than philosophical. (p. 487)

Anne Stevenson, "Snaffling and Curbing." in The Listener (© British Broadcasting Corp. 1977; reprinted by permission of Anne Stevenson). Vol. 98, No. 2530. October 13, 1977, pp. 486-87.∗