Customer Reviews

The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt

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Amy Clampitt was an American original. Both her life and her poetry demand serious attention. Having all of her five volumes in one big, beautiful book means that a reader can take the measure of (and derive pleasure from) the woman who was America's oldest "young" poet, who did not publish her first book until she was 63. Now that her letters have also been published, we can get a sense of the woman behind the pen. Both the letters and, even more fully, the poems, attest to the deep humanity of a wonderful writer.

Amy Clampitt sure-handedly set the gold standard for poetry in the waning decades of the twentieth century. Her work is a universe of grace. I've got three copies of this one--one for the bedside table, one for sneaking reacquaintance in the lower-left drawer of my office desk, and another for the slow-crawling intervals of the commute. When it comes to poetry, there haven't exactly been too many essential collections of late. But this is one.

Now here in one gorgeous volume is 496 pages of proof that this original and curious intellect once lived among us, and, having looked (and looked) at our time and many places, left us these hard-headed, light-filled poems.