In the short time that Spring Essence has been in print, many critics have given the book good reviews. Sam Howe Verhovek says, in his 2001 review of the book for the New York Times: "The book has drawn glowing reviews on both sides of the Pacific and was mentioned by President Bill Clinton in a toast during his trip to Vietnam." Much of the attention for the book has not centered on the poetry itself, although this book does mark the first major publication of Ho's poems. Instead, the book has been hailed for its groundbreaking achievement in linguistics, namely its typographic representation of Nom—the nearly extinct Vietnamese ideographic script that Ho used to write her poems. The Publishers Weekly reviewer in 2000 says, "It's the backstory more than the actual English renderings of these poems that has been generating pre-pub attention for this title." This...