David Mason in the Spring 2007 Hudson review

What attracted me first to this Bird's book was its title: Trouble Came to the Turnip, perhaps a nod to the land of Nod. The title poem itself is Muldoonishly formal, palatable more than suss-able, I would say. Having come for the shape, though, I found one of her more shapeless rants, "This Time Last Week," to be deeply compelling. Here are two stanzas extracted almost at random to give you a sense of her intelligence:

I want to write
I want to be respected.
I want to be a respected writer.
I want to meet people who will inspire me
to write letters to them when I am forty saying
'Thanks for inspiring me.'
But who are these people
in their ironed shirts and their reading glasses
and their well-funded quests?
Are you kidding me with this?

The inconceivable nature of nature

This—this is what we do—this is what science does—but this is what people do, when we try

Work conversation

A: You could use sed.

B: What's sed?

C: It's like awk.

B: What's awk?

A: It's like sed.