SOURCE: "Statements and Poetry: Salutes and Censures Re-Examined," in Critical Perspectives on Dennis Brutus, edited by Craig W. McLuckie and Patrick J. Colbert, Three Continents Press, 1995, pp. 135-141.

In the following excerpt, Ayling offers an assessment of the poems in Salutes and Censures and criticizes Brutus for writing poetry without tension.

Dennis Brutus was already a well known poet and activist by the time in the early 1980s that he came to collect together the occasional writings that eventually appeared as Salutes and Censures. Of the eight previous collections of his poems, three were of major proportions in quality as well as length: Letters to Martha, A Simple Lust and Stubborn Hope, for all their unevenness, have yet a scope and humane compass that make their author a poet whose contribution to South African letters must be taken into account in any future critical assessment and revaluation of...