Amy Clampitt is a most spirited and exhilarating performer. An enormous appetite for observation and zeal to describe precisely what she has observed are transmitted through both the best and the least successful of her poems. ‘Gusto’ is the word that springs to mind – and not only because it was a term of the highest commendation with the senior American poet whom, in many superficial respects, she most closely resembles: Marianne Moore. One registers this quality, bracingly, through the singular rhythms which permeate her new collection, What the light was like, and which, in her verse, have come largely to take the place of orthodox prosody.

LRB 17 April 1986 | PDF Download