Harrowed by desire's ancient curse, in solo crushed-heart universe, always in every brutish intimacy of public event—harrowed by love's death's imperishable lie, by love's unfailing resurrection—harrowed by subtlest helplessness, grossest anger—Etel Adnan's work possesses maturity one had thought extinct. I don't know why so very few Americans write poetry for grown-ups, but Adnan sure does and it's good.
—Duncan McNaughton

Just where is that voice coming from?... The determining sensibility combines the vistas of an insistently decentered consciousness, defining the poetic self through a contemplation of mortality.
—Michael Beard, World Literature Today