"A sensitive, spirited, and intelligent poet. Feeling is channeled into a style that is direct and sharp....Wit and tenderness combine into humanity."
--Poetry, about Once

"In these poems there's the power of a mind's concentrated passion....Walker's language moves among griefs, loves, hopes....There's a compassion in the poems that is not only painfully earned but has, each time, to be earned over again--and it is this that gives it its authenticity."
--Denise Levertov, author of Life in the Forest, About Good Night, Willie Lee, and I'll See You in the Morning

"[Alice Walker] is exceptionally brave: She takes on subjects at which most writers would flinch and quail, and probably fail. She shrinks from no moral or emotional complexity....In Walker's work nothing is ordinary....She is a marvelous writer."
--San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, about You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down

"Graceful in their spirituality, openness to experience, and rueful humor, Walker's poems revolve around love and gratitude for the earth."
--Booklist

"The overall effect is that of listening to a wise woman--the 'apprentice elder'... whose gift to us is a vision of wholeness and delight in the world."
--Cleveland Plain Dealer