SOURCE: "Island Voices," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4545, May 11-17, 1990, p. 495.

In the following review of The Wreck of the Archangel, Maxwell praises Brown as a creator of "pure and unadulterated" poetry.

There can be few poets anywhere in the Western world writing as pure and unadulterated a poetry as that of George Mackay Brown. His line of descent begins with the Wanderer/Seafarer, alone with his language. But Mackay Brown is very much at anchor, partaking of what his mournful ancestor dreamed: "a fire, autumn beef and ale, welcomings there, / they warmed and worded them well". There is something wondrous about a contemporary poet who is not only alert to the chances given by the kenning, the compound, the archaism, but takes them—"wavecrash", "sunbright"—and, by dint of that awareness, enables the compounds we already have ("sweetheart", "starlight", "blackbird", "nightfall") to split and reform with...