 Writing in Poetry (magazine), David Orr noted how the poems "shuffle between registers and tones, use deliberately mismatched diction", and cited "Biespiel's best poems in this untraditional vein" as the ones with the "clearest connection to lyric poetry".Michael Collier praised the book for demonstrating "the pure and powerful recombinant energy of language that is the essence of lyric poetry".Shattering Air