"The rare American poet who managed to make poems that were at once fanciful and grave, mundane and transcendent. . . . His work is singular in American poetry for marrying goofball humor and childish jouissance to a lyricism that never seems cheap or self-serious-an unusual achievement." -- New York Times Book Review

"James Tate never ceases to astonish, dismay, delight, confuse, tickle, and generally improve the quality of our lives." -- John Ashbery

"A poem out of nothing...is Tate's genius...Just about anything can happen next in this kind of poetry and that is its attraction." -- Charles Simic