Contemporary Literary Criticism | Hamilton, Ian - Michael Hofmann (review date 25 March 1988)

Michael Hofmann (review date 25 March 1988)

SOURCE: Hofmann, Michael. “An Oriental Air.” New Statesman 115, no. 2974 (25 March 1988): 28.

[In the following review of Fifty Poems, Hofmann asserts that, although Hamilton's poetry shows little variation or development through the years, some of his poems are brilliant and express “unwavering intensity.”]

This is a small, indispensable volume. It is a “collected poems” by any other name: but “fifty” expresses more regret, more limitation and more anxiety about the book's achievement than “collected” ever could.

That [Fifty Poems] has been published at all in the indifferent jostle of the 1980s is an act of some grace and imagination, for Ian Hamilton's reputation as a poet is neither new, nor booming, nor much discussed at all. Most readers over, say, 38 will know of his work; few under that age will have thought of him—the reviewer and television...

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