"Just as he took on the guise of sexual tough guy, self-deprecating poet became another of his poses: ‘I have been reading the proofs of my collected poems, 500 pages of them, TWICE, looking for errors and all I have been able to see in forty years of poetry is pretentiousness, datedness, and boredom, boredom, boredom…[I] felt about as kindly to the poetry in front of me as I were Ian Hamilton.’ As we know from earlier letters, Gunn does not think much of Ian Hamilton."
Colm Toibin PN Review