"Waniek is a poet of intelligence, passion, and gentleness with a fine sense of the comic and unfailing judgment about what constitutes a poetic line. She creates a rich mixture of impressions about the speaker of these poems as a woman who is at the same time in her mid-twenties...
Marilyn Waniek's poems reach past feminist anguish and black rage; they spring from her own sources in an accomplished style that is at once lean, subtle, and strong.