Amy Clampitt Biography

Amy Clampitt was an American poet and author known for works marked by dense language and complex allusions. She published her first book of poetry at the age of 63. Her acclaimed book of poems ‘The Kingfisher’ was more like the work of a mature poet, rather than one publishing for the first time. After ‘The Kingfisher’, four more major literary works were published, with the last being ‘A Silence Opens’. She reflected a blend of Quaker roots and Bohemian New York life, expressed with a fluent rush of words that conveyed a sense of motion. Her works made abundant use of erudite allusions that are supported by detailed footnotes. Her poetry is distinguished by a number of notable characteristics that include the generous use of dashes and hyphens, single letters, long dependent clause strings and obscure vocabulary. Her major publications are considered to be virtuoso works of art. She wrote with the awareness of having to produce a lifetime's worth of work in far less than a lifetime's length. Her poems often involved journeys, classical myth, images of femaleness and a sense of the natural world as numinous. Her poetry is ornate, dense, filled with arcane allusions, erudite and linguistically elegant. She became a major voice for contemporary American poetry, and her works continue to be interpreted.