The poems in Janet Frame's The Pocket Mirror abound in neat, topographical observations, rendered sensitively and often given a sophisticated twist. She writes easily about the flora and fauna of her New Zealand landscape, with an occasional more interesting note of reservation and disquiet…. But the ease quickly turns into facility and garrulousness, leaving a finished, but hollow, quality in her diction…. There are too many trivia in the collection—poems of embarrassing word-play or clumsy jabberwocky—and the general effect is of an agreeable, if sentimental, talent given too relaxed a rein.

"Topography and Triviality," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1968; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), No. 3442, February 15, 1968, p. 155.∗