In the very first poem of "For the Sleepwalkers," Edward Hirsch reveals a major conflict:

          … yet we manage, we survive
          so that losing itself becomes a kind
          of song, our song, our only witness
          to the way we die, one day at a time …

But if this is a poetry of survival, it is also a poetry of narcissistic invention employing exaggerated tone and metaphor…. As Mr. Hirsch notes in "Cocks," "The guardian / Angel of poetry" endlessly tries "to astonish … and to offend."

"Poets, Children, Soldiers" can paradoxically contain a striking image of insomnia—"I'm tired / of living like a broken yellow oar / awash in the blue waters of nightfall"—immediately followed by the trite implication that only poets, children and soldiers "know about the black / trenches of moon-light on the ceiling."…

Personae appear, some famous (Rilke, Rimbaud, Nerval, Vallejo, Smart, Lorca). At his best, Mr. Hirsch confirms our expectations of these people, but often his approach is pretentious….

In general, Mr. Hirsch presents us with the seductive inventive excess that has come to typify much contemporary American poetry. (p. 34)

Hugh Seidman, "Four Poets," in The New York Times Book Review, September 13, 1981, pp. 14, 32, 34.∗