“Daniel Mark Epstein writes in the great tradition of Yeats and Frost, using elegantly controlled language to capture the raggedness and heartbreak of life. This extraordinarily lovely and moving book is a testament to the achievement of a major American poet.”

“The poems in Daniel Mark Epstein’s eighth poetry collection range from the kind of solid and accomplished works for which he is known to astonishing pieces that are near-spiritual encounters”

“Biographies of Aimee Semple McPherson, Nat 'King' Cole, and Edna St. Vincent Millay have won Epstein greater renown, but his best writing is his mythically and historically haunted poetry... Epstein's new work... expresses the sorrows of the middle of life's journey with near-Dantesque poignancy.”

“For all his absolute clarity and purity of diction, Daniel Mark Epstein raises dark winds of the spirit and starts echoes from the deep past. The rocky deserts of biblical Israel and the meadows of Greece are both his native ground. Each poem is a masterfully wrought structure of fine phrasing, sharp imagery and metrical liveliness.”

“Daniel Mark Epstein is a truly outstanding poet. I admire the flexibility that can produce compelling short poems life 'At Poe's Grave' and 'Helen,' a fully justified sestina in 'The Inheritance,' and a fine readable story-poem in 'Solomon and the Four Winds.' I am grateful for his artful openness, his power to touch the heart.”

“In poem after poem of his fifth and newest collection of verse, SPIRITS, Daniel Mark Epstein shows how miracles, surprises and perhaps even spiritual dimensions pervade things and people's live... Everything in the world of this poet reveals a cornucopia of hidden surprises, with spiraling processes embracing and infusing all.”