[4] In The New Yorker, Seuss stated that she began to reckon with and even question the point of poetry during the loss of several loved ones and the alienation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After writing Frank: sonnets in 2021, Seuss "needed to turn a corner, as one must, into the next book or sequence or whatever" which ultimately led her to the "dire" interrogation of poetry writ large.

[5] In a starred review, Publishers Weekly concluded that "These irreverent, pulsing, and defiant poems are full of dangerous good sense.

Hanif Abdurraqib, writing for The New Yorker, said "The collection—sometimes playfully, sometimes with earnest curiosity, sometimes dismissively—tries to answer the question of poetry’s utility, and does so by sweeping through multiple forms, summoning the dead".

[5] The Chicago Review of Books stated that "The collection is a glorious origin story, describing the coup de foudre that Seuss encountered with her chosen profession, her calling really, grounded in experiences that didn’t follow the traditional—or patriarchical— trajectory of academe and ivy".