Linda Hogan (writer) Critical Essay | Critical Review by Laura Kennelly

Critical Review by Laura Kennelly

SOURCE: “Four Poets, Four Voices,” in Belles Lettres, Vol. 4, No. 2, Winter, 1989, p. 8.

In the following excerpt, Kennelly shares her mixed feelings about Savings: Poems. While she finds that Hogan captures the images of wild animals superbly, she believes that Hogan's poems, at times, sound forced.

Linda Hogan (Savings) is aware of what she is doing, but sometimes I just do not care. You might. She is a deeply meditative poet, and I suspect that Savings would endure well if one dipped into it over the years. Her images are firm; her poetic structures are competent. There is little in these poems to disgust and nothing slovenly; but many poems seem heartless, cold, even forced. Take, for example, these lines from “The Lost Girls.”

We go on or we don't, knowing about our inner women and when they left us like we were bad mothers or lovers...
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