Greenvoe is his first novel. The beauty and precision of his style, where the right word stands in place of three or four near-right words, and the vividness of his imagery all point to the disciplines and perceptions of the poet. That he is also a novelist is demonstrated best in his characters. They are so firmly fleshed and he has endowed them with such vitality that they have that rare quality of seeming to live outside of and beyond the narrative. Novels like this don't come along very often. (pp. 8-9)