As an offering of selected works removed from all context, Mayer’s newest poetry collection reads like a glimpse into a vivacious mind rankled by incessant stillness and external distractions….Bracing and carnal, Mayer provides an idiosyncratic way to acknowledge changes in contemporary consciousness while framing her work in a new and dynamic light.

Mayer quotes Vladimir Nabokov, in The Gift: “I seem to remember my future works, although I don’t even know what they will be about.” In its newness, its remembrance, and its diaristic now, Milkweed Smithereens is a doggedly gorgeous expression of that peculiar, clairvoyant temporality.

A poet of extraordinary inventiveness, erotic energy and challenge, and ironic intelligence.

Mayer writes the kind of nonsense that makes sense, and sense that is nonsense: I can’t think of a better centering device in these topsy-turvy times.