“What's poetry, if it's worth its salt, / but a phrase men can pass from hand to mouth?”

There's something in me that insists it sings / Freely, for nothing, the lovely, lonely art / Called poetry, an art you understand. (from 'Venezuela' by Douglas Dunn)

A poet of rare lyric intensity - Oxford Companion to English Literature

Dear beauteous Death! the jewel of the just...

pared-down precision and scorching intensity - Helen Dunmore

Nor can I drop my lids, nor shade my brows, but there he stands beside the lifted sash. - Frederick Tuckerman 'An Upper Chamber In A Darkened House'

A frail, dead, new-born lamb, ghostly and pitiful and white a blot upon the night, the moon's dropped child! - Charlotte Mew, 'Fame'

His poetry is what all poetry should be, the surprising and beautiful organisation of things that life has disorganised. John Fuller