Love and Other Deaths: you can take the choice. I don't feel that D. M. Thomas, a poet of ranging and fertile imagination, has yet settled for what he really wants, but at least [this] largish collection provides plenty to choose from. I'll take, not the sci-fi verse or mythological excursions which blend with it, but those compassionate, discerning, well-made poems 'of death and loss' which are closer to his personal concerns; especially 'Dream', and 'Reticent', about the gentle power of understatement on the lips of his dead parents. 'Dream' allows Thomas to use an experimental, disjointed form to excellent effect without dispersing the emotion in gimmickry; it is absolutely unforced, true and moving. (p. 60)

Alan Brownjohn, in New Statesman (© 1975 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), July 11, 1975.