SOURCE: A review of Seeing through the Sun, in Publisher's Weekly, Vol. 227, April 19, 1985, p. 80.

In the following review, the critic finds that, although at times touching and mystical, Hogan's poems generally lack distinction and vision.

The poems [Seeing through the Sun] of this Chickasaw Indian have an aboriginal, autochthonous quality. They are songs of the earth in which the personification of nature has as much a mystical as a metaphoric sense. Although they appear to come out of the poet's own experience, they nonetheless have a tendency to become abstract. The scenes and landscapes that Hogan describes are generalized and often amorphous, lacking in character and distinction. What is intended to be haunting and celebratory comes off as merely monotonous. Certain sharply etched images and certain poems in which the speaker is clearly integrated into her poem stand out, but on the whole Hogan's poetry lacks authority and...