Hoffman, like Winters, like the New Critics, like Berryman, Jarrell, Hollander, and a few others, is one of the minority of true writer/scholar/teacher hybrids whose intelligence turns as naturally to the crafting of creative scholarship as to poetry (if not perhaps with equal pleasure)….

If Hoffman is an academic professional, if he values, modifies, and uses easily the traditional forms of poetry in English, his own poetry would nevertheless be incorrectly characterized as "academic" if the term means drily bookish, bloodless, "dissociation from nature." Nor is it "intellectual," for all its intelligence; nor is it difficult of access, though the later work yields much of its potential quality and meaning after multiple readings. [Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba: Selected Poems] establishes Hoffman's as a poetry lovingly crafted, fine in its descriptions, haunting and strange in its myth-making, and increasingly memorable.

The pleasure of perusing...