"Working in acrostics, chain verse, prose, couplets, quatrains, Ossip's a magpie who pilfers from magpies....[S]he has an eye for 'the light of the culture: gold and misleading' and an ear that saves her wisdom moments from bluntness: 'I see the forest, I see the trees. / What I can't see is the / dappled clearing I'm standing on.' And then she devastates you by removing a single letter from a common poetic word: 'In the clearing, the now is falling.'"
The Chicago Tribune
"It may be the case that Ossip understands the elasticity and capaciousness of contemporary poetry better than anybody. . . . This is our book."
NPR
"In as much as it makes sense to talk about writing as perfect, The Do-Over is not, nor does it mean to be. But it is remarkable: unusually alive, intelligent and alert; unusually imaginative in its ways of letting the now fall into poems that find more invitations in impermanence than any others I’ve read recently."
Slate
"This supremely protean, dexterous poet focuses her reader’s attention on the hinges between the physical and metaphysical, on the reinvention of narrative and metaphor.... Ossip suggests that we let grief enliven us, shake up our language, darken our metaphors, and tear us awake."
Harvard Review
Unassuming and masterfully crafted, Ossip’s poetry is sneaky, very often disguising itself as easy and surprising you the moment you let your guard down. . . . The Do-Over is a kind of elegy to contemporary culture: it critiques modern life while basking in its ever-younger, glitzier rabble."
The Paris Review
"Each of Ossip’s acrostics shows her to be a master of compression, whereas the longer, serial prose-verse poems demonstrate her ability to build longer structures without sacrificing density of language.”
The Brooklyn Rail
"Working in acrostics, chain verse, prose, couplets, quatrains, Ossip's a magpie who pilfers from magpies....[S]he has an eye for 'the light of the culture: gold and misleading' and an ear that saves her wisdom moments from bluntness: 'I see the forest, I see the trees. / What I can't see is the / dappled clearing I'm standing on.' And then she devastates you by removing a single letter from a common poetic word: 'In the clearing, the now is falling.'"
―The Chicago Tribune
"It may be the case that Ossip understands the elasticity and capaciousness of contemporary poetry better than anybody. . . . This is our book."
―NPR
"In as much as it makes sense to talk about writing as perfect, The Do-Over is not, nor does it mean to be. But it is remarkable: unusually alive, intelligent and alert; unusually imaginative in its ways of letting the now fall into poems that find more invitations in impermanence than any others I’ve read recently."
―Slate
"This supremely protean, dexterous poet focuses her reader’s attention on the hinges between the physical and metaphysical, on the reinvention of narrative and metaphor.... Ossip suggests that we let grief enliven us, shake up our language, darken our metaphors, and tear us awake."
―Harvard Review
“Unassuming and masterfully crafted, Ossip’s poetry is sneaky, very often disguising itself as easy and surprising you the moment you let your guard down. . . . The Do-Over is a kind of elegy to contemporary culture: it critiques modern life while basking in its ever-younger, glitzier rabble."
―The Paris Review
"Each of Ossip’s acrostics shows her to be a master of compression, whereas the longer, serial prose-verse poems demonstrate her ability to build longer structures without sacrificing density of language.”
―The Brooklyn Rail
