This ability to tell which lines live and which only counterfeit life-call it, simply, taste-is Mr. James's great strength as a critic of poetry. His focus on the phrase and the line, rather than the large structure or the governing thought, feels like a poet's way of reading.... Mr. James's generosity of attention, his willingness to trawl through pages of verse in search of the hair-raising line, is his most appealing quality as a critic. -- Adam Kirsch - Wall Street Journal
Clive James's Poetry Notebook reintroduced me to the intense pleasures of close reading. Although he has some hard-and funny-things to say about Ezra Pound, James is firmly committed to celebration. He reminds us that poetry is, or can be, 'the most exciting thing in the world.' And this is what literary criticism, and literary pedagogy, should aim for: not to add a further encrustation of complexity, but simply to instill the readerly habits of gratitude and awe. -- Martin Amis
Clive James has a fantastic range and depth of knowledge. He is, at times, miraculously funny. He writes knowledgeably and with passion about literature, and especially poetry. -- Sam Leith - Spectator
The James voice is immediately recognisable. To describe it as comic does not do it justice: it might be fairer to say that the world it inhabits is prone, at most times, to a comedy of desperate sorts...James's best comedy is in the phrase-making, a craft at which he excels...James was -and remains-far more than a clever boy laughing at muddied oafs. He is a scholar who has preferred wearing his scholarship lightly. -- George Szirtes - New Statesman
As a critic, James is formidable, blending vast reading with the knowledge of practice. He demurs from having an 'aesthetic system,' but this is too modest. There are some clear positions in Poetry Notebook, and they are erudite, strident, but balanced...Poetry Notebook is a stellar collection by a great Australian writer, a man who, '[l]ooking back...with tired eyes,' retains the poetic enthusiasm of his teenage self. -- James McNamara - The Australian
[Clive James] is a unique figure, a straddler of genres and a bridger of the gaps between high and low culture. He will be seen, I think, as one of the most important and influential writers of our time. -- Bryan Appleyard - Sunday Times
This collection of 'miniature essays' on poetry... informs and delights.... -- Publishers Weekly, Starred review
[Poetry Notebook is] compact and entertaining... James is still with us and, on virtually every page of Poetry Notebook, shedding sparks. Readers who make the mistake of finding his taste for canonical poems 'conservative' should still get a charge from his bloody-minded drive... A breathtaking book by an old master running out of breaths. -- Jason Guriel - The New Republic
A rousing compendium of short essays about poetry and poets that James has published over the years.... What you will find in Poetry Notebook are charged, idiosyncratic readings of the classics as well as more recent works.... I defy anyone not to be moved by these essays in which a great critic reflects on the works that have shaped him, even as, James says, he prepares himself to head off to 'the empty regions.' -- Maureen Corrigan - NPR
[James] writes with enthusiasm about his favorites-Yeats, Frost, Auden, Wilbur, Larkin.... Here, too, are takes on some fine poets who aren't household names: Louis MacNeice, Les Murray, Michael Longley and Stephen Edgar.... A practical, witty and trenchant assessment of 20th-century British and American poetry. -- Tom Lavoie - Shelf Awareness
A book bursting with quotable moments, many of them spill-your-drink funny.... Indeed, great poetry thrills James in the way roller coasters and celebrity sightings thrill other people. His enthusiasm is infectious. -- Emily Donaldson - Toronto Star
