A period of cultural transition is bound to produce artistic hybrids. For many artists and writers today, there is a special appeal in the kind of style that combines a renewed respect for tradition with a loyalty to the radical ideas of the last twenty years. Thus we find novelists using traditional forms of storytelling to celebrate the most marginal forms of human behavior, or painters “rediscovering” the figure for politically tendentious or absurdist purposes. There is even now a celebrated Broadway musical reaffirming the ideals of familial trust and loyalty—for a family, incidentally, headed by parents of the same sex.
Not all these efforts fail as art, of course, but there is a special difficulty for the artist who would attempt to “bridge the gap” and reconcile such contradictory impulses. The poetry of Amy Clampitt—whose first book of poems, The Kingfisher, was published recently to extraordinary acclaim—is a perfect example of what can happen when an artist is unequal to the task.
On first glance, The Kingfisherappears to be much at odds with the flat, ironical, formless poetry of recent years. It is intently serious and unabashedly “beautiful” and “poetic.” What is more, its subject is nature itself, that hallowed ground of poetry’s past. But ultimately Clampitt’s poetry shows itself to be most at odds with itself, for Clampitt refuses to “merely” pursue beauty and refinement. Her poetry is laced with “concerned” allusions to the experience of war, the male dominance of culture, and the