Other reactions:

Jan D. Hodge surely creates the best shaped poems anybody has done [in a long while], and some of them, like “Pandanggo sa Ilaw” and “Carousel II,” have called forth more ingenuity than even Herbert’s “Easter Wings.”  Best of all, Hodge doesn’t stop at ingenuity, but can write good poems.

        —  X.J. Kennedy, author of  In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus

[Shaped poems must have] something besides their shapes going for them. "Carousel" is charming, musical, and both happy and wistful at the same time.  Its repetitions recall the circular motion of the merry-go-round and there is wit as well as music in its lines. 

        ― Fred Chappell, on awarding "Carousel" the 1997 WordArt Esme Bradberry Prize

I was most impressed with your shaped poems, and was delighted to observe that you "bury" an accentual-syllabic rhythm in your purely graphemic "meter", thus giving far more coherent texture to the poems than is usually found in verse of this kind. I was pleased as well by so many moments and details. 

        --- John Hollander, written in 1992 in response to several of the earlier poems in the collection

[On "Icon"]  What a remarkable poem!  Quite apart from its deft (and thematically apposite) combination of forms, I especially appreciate the wry meditation on what has and has not changed between our foundational myths and contemporary life. 

        --- Josh Mostafa, editor of New Trad Journal