Clampitt, Amy - Robert B. Shaw (essay date 1994)
Robert B. Shaw (essay date 1994)
SOURCE: "High Reachers," in Poetry, Vol. 165, No. 3, December, 1994, pp. 158-65.
[In the following review of A Silence Opens, Shaw praises Clampitt's ability to impose an order upon the multitude of small details that leads the reader to the poem's moral message.]
Amy Clampitt's latest book [A Silence Opens] like her earlier ones, is at first a little intimidating in its bursts of abundance. It can seem like a cornucopia out of control. Rather than shrinking back, it is best to allow oneself to be engulfed; what seems a welter proves to have a fair amount of order after all. The plenitude in question is both in subject matter and style; geographically and philologically, the poet is well-travelled. While the multiple shifts in location throughout the book may recall Elizabeth Bishop, the style is closer to that of Bishop's mentor Marianne Moore. Like Moore, Clampitt collects curious, almost...
[The entire page is 1047 words long]
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