Of these 50 poems [in The Kingfisher], 14 have appeared in The New Yorker, consecrated there by the most fastidious editorial taste now (and for the last 25 years) operative in the world of commercial periodicals; in her own high middle ages, Amy Clampitt has had her first book published ninth in the Knopf Poetry Series, consecrated there by the most fastidious editorial taste now (and for the last four years) operative in the world of commercial publishing; embellished with commendations from Richard Wilbur and Helen Vendler, who has since reviewed the book at length in The New York Review of Books [see excerpt above] … this poetry is doomed to success.

Of course, success is perhaps the showiest way we have of ignoring our poets—thrusting them into the neglectful limelight where they can writhe—as if the sound were turned off on a brilliant screen—until someone rescues them from...