When Amy Clampitt's first collection, The Kingfisher, was published in Britain, Blake Morrison, in the Observer, welcomed 'the most gifted and acclaimed American poet to emerge for years', while the book itself was described by James Fenton, in Poetry Review, as 'a work of the most beautiful gravity, scope and movement'. That volume and the four which followed add up to one of the marvels of late twentieth-century American poetry: an oeuvre that addresses the big topics of nature and culture, and rises to the challenge each time with unflagging energy, grace, brilliance and humanity. The present volume of Collected Poems carries an introduction by Mary Jo Salter.