[5] Between 2012 and 2019, Hilbert taught at the World of Versecraft, the low residency Master of Fine Arts program in poetry at Western State University of Colorado.

[16] His poem "Ashore," which appeared in the Yale Review early in 2009, was reprinted by the Academy of American Poets for their August 2009 "Shark Week" feature.

[18] Hilbert's unpublished collection Cathedral Building, which combines a wide variety of styles and poetic approaches, has been a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry (under the title Removal of the Body), the Barrow Street Press Book Contest, the Yale Younger Poets Prize, and the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.

[20] In 2010, four of Hilbert's poems, "City-Scape Gentlemen’s Club, Queens," "Sunrise with Sea Monsters," "Rakewell in TriBeCa," "Dusk in a Crowded Train Compartment, Regretting My Life," were translated into Czech and appeared in the magazine Souvislosti.

[25] Rowan Ricardo Phillips wrote that "moved by beauty, attuned to the sublimity of natural things, livened by paradox, coaxed into song by pentameter, Ernest Hilbert's rich new book covers more emotional ground than a reader has any right to expect.

"[26] Rachel Hadas wrote that the poems in the collection "fashion a stern, witty, and often poignant music out of seemingly unpromising elements courageously glimpsed, combined, or imagined.

[28] A. E. Stallings wrote in a review that "Hilbert is enjoying, mid-career, a new formal freedom, and with it, wider territory to cover, or perhaps vice versa," adding "here a certain amount of youthful edge and swagger has been worn away, but is replaced by mastery, depth, and mellowed sweetness.

"[29] In 2014, Hilbert began work as librettist for a new opera with composer Stella Sung titled The Book Collector,[31] commissioned by the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance.

[33][34] Hilbert also supplied the story and libretto for Sung's three-act opera, The Red Silk Thread, a historical drama about Marco Polo set in the court of Kublai Khan.

The music for the final section of the album, scored for strings, harp, and piano, was supplied by classical composer Christopher LaRosa.