"The excitement of Ann Lauterbach's poetry, underneath all, comes from its sense of high drama. Hers is a drama of manners just at the point where they are being torn away, and one is left without any devices-except perception. "One may admire the painterly, delicate language here, but not at the risk of ignoring Lauterbach's very persistent and elaborated psychology. These poems are peopled: with men, mothers, friends, rivals, heroes, relatives dead and alive, all real and subject to the motions of grief or envy or gratitude." --Phillip Lopate