Reviewers were unanimous in their praise of Rose, though because Lee is such a young poet and has written relatively little, there is scant criticism on his work. Reviewing the collection for the Nation, Jessica Greenbaum writes, "Rose announces Lee's obsessions but also bears the innate triumph of ordering language." One of those obsessions is Lee's father, who appears throughout the book as a spectral presence Lee grapples to understand. Lee's mentor at the University of Pittsburgh, poet Gerald Stern, writes in the collection's foreword: "What characterizes Lee's poetry is a certain humility, a kind of cunning, a love of plain speech." Stern adds: "The father is the critical event, the critical "myth" in Lee's poetry." Ruth Y. Hsu, in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, ties Lee's passion for his family to his ethnic heritage, noting, "In Rose Lee reveals a diasporic consciousness that is frequently...