Hitch-22 on A German Requiem: “I was very stirred to find, when I opened it, that he had placed on his epigraph page the opening lines of James Fenton's poem "A German Requiem": It is not what they built.”
Hitch-22 on Children in Exile: “The resulting poems—collected as Children in Exile—comprise an essential complement to their predecessors in Memory of War.”
Hitch-22 on Memory of War: “The resulting poems—collected as Children in Exile—comprise an essential complement to their predecessors in Memory of War. One of the latter is titled “Prison Island.””
Hitch-22 on Our Western Furniture: “He had already demonstrated extreme precocity in winning the Newdigate poetry prize for a sonnet sequence titled Our Western Furniture, about Commodore Perry's historic "opening" of the closed island society of Japan.”
Hitch-22 on Terminal Moraine: “When James's first collection of published poems, Terminal Moraine, came out in 1972, I have just noticed to my irritation, it was inscribed "To Chris, from the author, with lot[s of love]..."”