In 1983 Alfred A. Knopf published a volume of poems by a little-known poet then past sixty years old. Titled The Kingfisher, this collection was praised (on the dust jacket) by Richard Wilbur as "extraordinary," by Joel Connaroe (Washington Post Book World , 3 April 1983) as "a wonderfully rich and ... gorgeous book [that] will enrich ... anyone who opens it," and by Edmund White (Nation, 16 April 1983) as "one of the most brilliant debuts in recent American literary history." The author was lauded for "a brilliant aural imagination" and "a quick eye for small, luminous details" (Connaroe), for a "keen mind combined with rich feeling" (May Swenson--on the dust jacket), and for language "used with the conjuring power of an original" (Elizabeth Jennings, Spectator, 4 August 1984). Outside the circle of those who read small poetry magazines and poems published in better-known magazines such as the New Yorker and the New Republic, Amy Clampitt was...