Eleanor Wilnor on Slantwise:
"Slantwise is gorgeous poetry, incandescent in language, orchestral in
range, unafraid of flourish and high finish, but putting all this to the uses
of earthly truths."
Mary Oliver on The Difficult Wheel:
“Betty Adcock ... writes poems that are as upright as houses, and as flighty as clouds.
She never postures. The poems of The Difficult Wheel are beautiful, meaningful,
and very real.”
Dave Smith on Intervale:
"Intervale will put Betty Adcock among the first rank of American poets
where she belongs. She has Robert Penn Warren's gift for telling a tale and
Elizabeth Bishop's gift for lyrical severity.... Intervale is a gift of gifts!"
In Nettles, Betty Adcock writes of the sharp, subtle pains that puncture life, of the darkness that mourning casts across our days, and of how even our most sublime memories are inevitably tinged with loss.
Publishers Weekly on Beholdings:
Precise, vivid images and a commanding tone empower these poems with urgency.
Both beholden to her past and a keen beholder of it, she tells stories like
the ones she heard as a child, in which ordinary local people become legendary.
Out of print
