[1] It was published by Graywolf Press after Juan Felipe Herrera selected Xie's manuscript for the Walt Whitman Award in 2017.

The New Yorker analyzed "The ironies of [Xie's] shifting positions, as a Chinese immigrant in America and as a Chinese-American travelling through Asia".

[8] The Poetry Project said "Xie’s poems travel Cambodia, Southern Europe, China and the US, while, like vagabonds, the people in the poems feel uprooted and excluded from their surroundings" and compared Xie's project to that of Natalie Diaz, Suji Kwock Kim, Cathy Park Hong, and other writers who "have shown that the private is always public for the disenfranchised citizen.

"[13] The Manchester Review concluded "there is a fine, ‘crystalline’ quality to the poems in Eye Level; both the realism and the mysticism of its themes and music feel warm and achieved.

"[14] Heavy Feather Review wrote that "Eye Level is refreshing and restorative, spiritual and physical, as great art is.