[The poems in An Armada of Thirty Whales] enjoy an access of individual being, whatever influences they preen themselves upon, which results from a pronounced form, uttered and therefore audible. In his brilliant little preface [see excerpt above], Auden is … beguiled by the problems of a modern nature poetry—"the preservation and renewal of natural piety toward every kind of created excellence"—which he sees to be one of Hoffman's overriding concerns…. Auden is right, of course—there is a poetry of "direct observation and description" which Hoffman over and over exemplifies, though it is important to discover that he does so, always, in connection with a ritual or cyclical image of birth, growth, death and regeneration, as here in "That the Pear Delights Me Now," tracing the tree's progress through the months, past the "roystering honeymakers, wholly unaware of the dust their bristles brought," past the fruit...