SOURCE: "Providence and the Abyss," in The Times Literary Supplement, December 22-28, 1989, p. 1417.

Below, Edwards provides a laudatory review of Annuciations.

Annunciations is the book in which Charles Tomlinson makes explicit what has always been the case, that his poetry looks to this world to provide the "religious" sense of life which Christianity for him can no longer sustain. The Christian vocabulary remains, but only to describe art as a return to Eden, and nature itself as a process of resurrection or a heaven. The "annunciation" of a larger-than-life presence in the world, of a reality which has preceded us and will outlast us, of a mystery ceaselessly entering local chance and circumstance, comes not from beyond but from within the world, often in the form of light from the sun and moon.

Everything is a message from a physical universe to the mind made alert. The poetry...