“Michael Mott's poems are strong in all the qualities that make good poetry: formal beauty, wise sense, and well-drawn imagery. He speaks to and for our time, from deep wells of history, with a firm understanding that the present is always an experience of the past.”
—Guy Davenport

“I am awed by the range and depth of this compilation of Michael Mott's poetry. Do you crave lyrics on nature, wry/wise readings of history: the famous, the infamous and the unknown; unflinching examinations of love, death and our pretenses? Those who have read Mott's two most recent books of poetry, the intricate and dark Piero di Cosimo and the brilliant Corday, will recognize the mastery and emotional power that place him firmly among the great poets of this or any other century.”
—Bradley R. Strahan

“The Hebraic premise that ‘words are things’ invests these poems with uncommon power, uncommon trouble, In Woman and the Sea, Michael Mott performs a mystery; his poems attain the surface stillness of finely sculpted artifacts, but with human blood -- and passion, and grief, and surprising joy — coursing through them. From an astonishing range of localities . . . Mr. Mott conducts his permutations of letters, yielding in virtually every case the Presence, if not the Name.”
—Scott Cairns