".... a poet who can get his wild sense of humour into poems that are linguistically subtle and open in form. Bauer cares about language, and loves it. The comedy is his way of exploring the large questions of life as process rather than stasis. The Terrible Word is both damn good and damn entertaining."

Douglas Barbour, The Dalhousie Review

"A gentleman-rather than a vulgarian-satirist, Bauer does not often find vice in his fellow man, but perhaps that is so because the people in his poems are liable to be more confused than destructive.... But laughter almost always wins out over despair."

Michael Brian Oliver, The Fiddlehead

"A Terrible Word has a vigour and wry humour reminiscent of Mark Twain. In 'What I Shudda Said to the Lady Who Asked Me, ' Bauer's excitement is so infections that you want to jump up on the desk beside him and shout your reply. Poems like 'Municipal Water' and 'Landscape As Tune' serve as calmer, meditative ground for the more outspoken pieces."

Cathleen Hoskins

"One of Bauer's chief strengths in A Family Album is a strikingly inventive imagination. We are urged to share his delight in life's absurdities, even while recognizing that the foibles he describes in others are too frequently our own."

Roger MacDonald, Canadian Book Review Annual

"In one of Bauer's stories, a photo of two smiling girls has caught one of them with her hands clenched in a fist. A nephew wonders, but as he says, he wonders out of love and all those who wonder for any other reason are 'voyeurs.' Bauer too wonders out of love, and his insights don't allow either himself or his readers to stoop to becoming voyeurs. He preserves and protects while missing nothing. Such tact and dignity are welcome."

Alexandra McHugh, The Gazette (Montreal)

"These stories are specific in capturing a recognizable region: the slow-paced, tradition-bound Eastern Seaboard. It is an idyllic world from certain angles and in certain seasons, but change the perspective, come two steps closer, and it darkens into a place betrayed and deserted by time.... For those interested in the art of narration, these stories are a pleasure to read. One savours the rich and varied vocabulary, and the experimentation with language and structure."

Carrie MacMillan, Quill and Quire

"Unsnarling String combines humour and down-to-earth philosophy, commonplace experience and delightful eccentricities. Bauer writes about simple things in life that become ridiculously tangled, and about how people reduce life's complications to simple formulas for survival..... Poems to be read aloud to family and friends."

Richard Lemm, The Atlantic Provinces Book Review