SOURCE: "Poetry in Review," in The Yale Review, Vol. 82, No. 3, July, 1994, pp. 170-73.

In the following review of A Silence Opens, Pettingell discusses the importance of history in Clampitt's poetry.

Can it really be only eleven years ago that readers of poetry discovered Amy Clampitt? Back then, in 1983, even sympathetic critics were taken aback by the rich density of her rhetoric. Nobody had expected a revival of almost nineteenth-century lustiness of language and imagery—especially in an era where an almost anorectic plain style still retained popularity. Reviews tackled her anomalies by tracing her diverse influences: John Donne and John Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Marianne Moore. Sometimes these explanations verged on the patronizing, yet few could deny that this sixty-three-yearold knew quite well what she was about, and, furthermore, had already captured an appreciative audience. Today she has become a measure of comparison: newcomer poets who write...