SOURCE: Greenlaw, Lavinia. “Heads Off.” New Statesman 128, no. 4433 (26 April 1999): 47-8.

In the following review, Greenlaw offers a favorable assessment of Hamilton's Sixty Poems.

Ian Hamilton long ago decided to keep his poetry apart from what he referred to as his “so-called literary life”. As founder of the Review, biographer of Matthew Arnold and Robert Lowell, and one of the best critical essayists we have, Hamilton as a literary figure is anything but “so-called”. As for his poetry, he seems to have understood its nature early on when he decided to stop “thinking like a poetry pro … fretting about range” or “output”.

Hamilton's first collection, The Visit (1970), was republished with minor revisions and 20 additions as Fifty Poems in 1988. Now we have the whole lot again with just ten additions, and yet Sixty Poems is sure to be one of the most affecting and satisfying collections we will see this...