Dennis O'Driscoll's sharp and stylish essays and reviews are well-known to readers of major literary journals. Troubled Thoughts, Majestic Dreams presents a welcome selection of his reflections on contemporary poetry in English and in translation; it contains also a number of personal reflections, including a colourful evocation of a Tipperary childhood. The state of Irish poetry, the 'insider dealings' of the poetry world, the enduring influence of East European poetry — the subjects surveyed in this lively and discriminating book are eclectic and diverse. As the author writes in the introduction, Troubled Thoughts, Majestic Dreams offers 'an option on the casual dip as well as the methodical trawl'.

'O'Driscoll is an omnivorous reader, a fluent enthusiast, a rare mix of innocence (by which I mean the capacity for curiosity and wonder) and experienced good sense in his approach to poems. Among some other indispensable reviewer's gifts he can claim are the ability to make clean, unadorned, unevasive summaries of a poet's virtues and vices, and the ability to distil the substantive and formal matter of a text into brief, manageable formulations . . . In their judicious enthusiasm, their telling engagement with whatever takes his fancy, O'Driscoll's 'objective, informed and lively' reviews make him an exemplary citizen in the republic of letters, a true, shrewd-tongued but never uncivil, servant of the Muse.'
                                                                                                            — Eamon Grennan, Poetry Ireland Review

'Anyone who has read a great deal of literary criticism will understand my initial apprehension when called to review a book comprised almost entirely of critical essays and book reviews. To my delight, Dennis O'Driscoll's Troubled Thoughts, Majestic Dreams: Selected Prose Writings did not leave me gasping for breath; instead it proved to be provocative, insightful and ultimately, entertaining.'
                                                                                                            — Valerie A. Murrenus, New Studies in Contemporary Irish Writing

'Much of what O'Driscoll says in these essays is both lucid and illuminating. Quick to deny that he is a scholar and, 'informed by primary reading rather than by aesthetics and theories', he is nonetheless always well informed and up to date with current critical thinking. His knowledge of contexts — biographical, historical and social — is rarely, if ever, questionable. More crucially, he forces those of us who are supposed to do this kind of thing for a living to rethink not only our reasons for doing it, but alternative ways of approaching the study of poetry in the future.'
                                                                                                                   — Philip Coleman, Irish Review