“The project as a whole (a long poem that covers almost 40 years and stretches over nine books!) is a pensive record of time and change; and this concluding book is full of poignant images.” — Toronto Star

“There is so much going on, line by line, in Whiteman’s Invisible World that it is hard to believe it could ever be in decline. Through nine volumes this serial poem teeters on the abyss, seems sure to fall into the infinite maw of self-pity, then rescues itself by an act of acro- or aerobatics — with language as gymnast, rhythm, the pilot — and sheer fortitude in control.” — Robert Hogg, poet

“The shadow of the pandemic lies over the book, the sense of isolation that lockdowns caused chiming well with the more general sense of decline, specifically what Whiteman sees as a decline in the numinous presence of the world of the gods, that informs the book, and, I imagine, the entire work.” — Elliptical Movements blog

“Bruce Whiteman makes audible the disorientation of pandemic isolation, cultural forgetting, and the absence of the real presence of others in these haunting and aphoristic prose stanzas.” — Sharon Thesen, poet

“Whiteman (our pandemic Virgil) writes the real that is ‘in decline’ back to full and complex life, tracing the crucial gods that live in the details of being a poet among a lost people, the romance of writing poems as the city sleeps, in watching spirited dogs run, and in those red wine memories of past lovers, those elusive, flickering flares we hurry past these days to run headlong into blue screens, fiery trysts, or amateur astrology, all of which are attractive trap doors. Yes, there is a hell of unmeaning out there, a world being unmade by unassailable forces, so we need every poet we have making the world visible again … and Whiteman’s symphonic cycle is ending, so I can only say in selfish vein, play on, Bruce, play on!” — Justin Million, author of EJECTA: The Uncollected KEYBOARDS! Poems (Apt. 9 Press)