The verse flexes muscle after muscle...The writing...can hover and dance. It has genuine grace. - George Szirtes

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

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

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

The poem might be our only evidence that an event has occurred: it exists for us as the sole trace of an occurrence. - Carolyn Forche

I suppose what I really like is to set up a system which looks wonderfully secure when you first encounter it on the page, but within the framework there are crazy things which tip the reader off-balance. - Bill Manhire

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

C. K. Williams is a wonderful poet, in the authentic American tradition of Walt Whitman and William Carlos Williams, who tells us on every page what it means to be alive in our time. - Stanley Kunitz

A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders - Seamus Heaney

Look for the opening of your spirit into the real world. This is the world in which your words ring true - Sebastian Barker

In my poetry I give primacy to the breath. For me it is the way the poem breathes that gives it form. - Penelope Shuttle