On Readiness

Behind surfaces that can sometimes be wryly comic, Mark Cox is unafraid to risk adult tenderness ("brutal tenderness" he says in one poem) and great empathy for this world's sufferers. Which is to say that beneath a rich variety of occasions (from an ancient Egyptian mummifier doing up a fifteen-foot crocodile, to a current-day housewife doing up an angel food cake), Cox's bedrock concern is that impossible thing of endless grief and joy that we call the human condition. These poetic meditations and monologues are some of the least prosaic prose you'll ever read. --Albert Goldbarth

on Sorrow Bread (2017)

Cox essays a huge terrain of subject and feeling, from dark wit to astringent violence to lamentation, from guarded hopefulness to quiet, intensely stirring affirmation. A lesser poet might see all this fly apart; Cox establishes supple coherence through richly consistent artistic command and scrupulous honesty of vision and voice. Tony Hoagland has said Mark Cox is "a veteran of the deep water; there's no one like him," and Thomas Lux identified him as "one of the finest poets of his generation." No one speaks more effectively of the vital and enduring syntaxes of common, even communal, life. --Richard Simpson

on Natural Causes (2004)

One of the best books I've read in years. In a style that's brash, offbeat, tough-minded and big-hearted, these poems explore the fundamental mysteries of love between parent and child, self and other, self and world. Beyond the inventive language and formal range, what makes this work so memorable is Cox's refusal to look away from even the hardest facts of "unadulterated sorrow." --Alan Shapiro

On Thirty-Seven Years from the Stone (1998):

Mark Cox has a wry, deadpan humor, a piercing wit, and a keen knowledge of the contradictions of the human heart. His words sift deep into life, into unconscious motivations, into the elusive countries of sadness and happiness. These poems transcend their own ironies. . . to sing with a moving simplicity, with an open and vulnerable voice. Thirty-Seven Years from the Stone confirms Mark Cox's promise and further fulfills his talent. --Edward Hirsch

On Smoulder (1989):

Great range and hunger haunt these poems . . . . He meditates, describes, narrates the impossible path between what is in us and what is around us--that is the heroism of his work . . . . [Poem for the Name Mary's] masterful handling of a fragile theme announces, as so much of Smoulder does, a major new speaker of The Real . . . ."--Stephen Berg