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...organic poetry of a very high order indeed, and it should please those purists among us who must insist on some totally new form that can embody all the complexity of psychological growth and reality flux and mercurial change that is all around us always, and yet still speak to us clearly in the here and now.
—William Packard
There is a kind of certainty that seems to characterize Jared Smith's best work, an understanding about place and the flow of spirit that makes you think of Thoreau along with a commitment as fierce as that of Pablo Neruda.
—Joseph Bruchac
...how joyous it feels to be reminded that every inch of earth we walk is a sacred bone-heap, and this is now true of our highways and dams and bridges. His elegy grows stronger, more urgent....I'd call him a prophet of doom if it were not for the love that simply aches in every line.
—Diana Hume George
He is a master of interplay between sensuous detail and the universal, illuminating the facets of or electric civilization and evoking the earth from which it rose. Esthetically discerning readers will see his spiritual kinship to C. K. Williams and compare his work favorably.
—Harry Smith
There is a lovely muscularity pervading Jared Smith's work that's reminiscent of the more obvious long-lined poets' efforts, Whitman's and C. K. Williams, for example. But Smith's poetry is unique in that he seems, unlike these other two writers, not to think in terms of an overflowing line, but to peer, consistently, beyond it...while Whitman's long lines are incantatory and Williams' are loquacious...Smith's work, much like an Action Painter's, serves the ambition of the gesture and thus, of necessity, stretches beyond the canvas.
—Terri Brown-Davidson
There is a tremendous Keatsian-Whitmanesque visionary sweep here, moving over the earth's surface, always concentrating on light, the Here and Now, but always in cosmic context. Smith's work, carefully read and meditated on, is a course in cosmic-personal sanity.
—Hugh Fox
Jared Smith...has learned to live and believe with conviction that the entire world belongs in and of poetry, not just pieces and bits like nature poetry, dramatic stories or the demands of friendship and love.
—Andrew Glaze
I like your I-witness of the song in our blood…it’s a pleasure!
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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