From D.H. Tracy, “Ten Takes,” Poetry 186, no. 3 (June 2005):

       “[The Optimist is a] work of some poise and finish, by turns delicate and robust, making balanced use of the imposing and receptive facets of intelligence. . . . 
       Eavan Boland has pointed out that, our talent promotion mechanism being inept, poets’ first books today are liable to resemble, in their level of development, the second and even third books of a couple of generations ago. The Optimist has very few burrs on it, does not feel like a debut. . . . [W]e have a lot to look forward to. This is a poet with absolutely no reliance on madness or on romantic mismatch between himself and the world, and he should, at the very least, be able to keep doing what he’s doing as impressively as he has been doing it, which is awfully impressively.”