[Blue Wine] describes a wide range of experience in confidently rhetorical terms, and seldom seems more than swaggering or pompous. To [Hollander's] credit, he is conscious of this tendency, but he is never sufficiently self-ironising to get away with it. Poem after poem slips into posturing, and object by object is buried in a plethora of detail. Even a turd becomes 'The half-dried, grey serpent-stump an unleashed dog left / To affront the carelessness of our steps'. Such wordiness is as reductive as the other poets' discretion—mainly because it does not allow him to build a firm enough foundation for his more abstract thoughts. This is particularly evident in the title poem, 'Blue Wine'. As each section comes to an end it closes in on itself, hiding its meanings and their relationship to the world. It is a form of literary narcissism; not surprisingly the wine 'broods on its own sleep' just as—elsewhere—a sunset is 'absorbed in itself' and clouds 'read their own shadows'. (p. 311)