A reckless tumble of words mixing the high and the low, like a rummage sale after the death of someone who adored both Shakespeare and smut. Norman Mailer

Hirshfield's poems renew, reaffirm the power of language to move deeply, to articulate experience precisely. - The Antioch Review

A large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland - Edward Hirsch

Louise Bogan's art is compactness compacted. Emotion with her, as she has said of certain fiction, is 'itself form, the kernel which builds outward form from inward intensity.' Marianne Moore

I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black. . . Gwendolyn Brooks

A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three; never less than all. Allen Tate

His poems are made from his life with his life; his poems are earned. He dares to be simple. And he is surely among the finest young poets alive. - The American Poetry Review

There's no one like him for making a simple declarative sentence crackle under your eyes like a burning apple-bough. Such magnificent wrath... - Hayden Carruth on Yvor Winters

All her poems have written underneath - 'I have seen it.' - Randall Jarrell

My father could only sign/His name, but he'd look at blueprints/& say how many bricks/ Formed each wall - My Father's Letters, Yusef Komunyakaa

I try to honor my reader's patience and generosity by presenting what I have to say as clearly and succinctly as possible. - Ted Kooser

Poetry is a way of living...a human activity like baking bread or playing basketball. - Robert Hass