“Mischa Willett has a music all his own, albeit a music informed by years of his attending to the inexhaustible songs that comprise both world poetry and sacred text. He plays, therefore, with received matter, and he employs surprising linguistic brilliance to compose oratoria that brighten the heart of his reader, even as they transpose the familiar, offering echoes of a prior song lovingly adapted to a new, an exhilarating voice.”

“There are echoes of the world Hopkins knew in Willett's collection, a world charged with the grandeur of God, but Phases is no mere act of mimesis. Willett's voice is his own, and his verse offers astonishing moments of confrontation and consolation. These poems name the reality of our shared human experience, and sing with wild abandon.”

“Mischa Willett's Phases takes time in stride. These poems rub shoulders with classical figures and Biblical traditions, stoics and shepherds and sleep-deprived poets, the better to place the old stories in a contemporary light. I admire the epigrammatic wit, Martial-like in its cutting wryness.”