SOURCE: A review of Savings: Poems in Choice, Vol. 26, No. 8, April, 1989, p. 1328.

In the following review, Jaskoski finds the poetry in Savings: Poems to be trite and undisciplined.

In her first collection, Calling Myself Home (1978), Hogan's poetry showed great promise: taut, deeply felt images and acerbic insights. Unfortunately, later collections do not show that promise being fulfilled. Although her area of concern has expanded beyond self and family to global issues and insights of peace and social justice, her craft does not show commensurate flexibility or rigor of discipline; she relies entirely on first-person free-verse lyrics of one or two pages, and in the present collection the writing is generally attenuated and sometimes reaches banality. The spark of promise is still present, but ever harder to find. Savings will be of interest mainly to undergraduate and graduate libraries aiming at complete collections in contemporary poetry and/or American...