In a long review of A Point Is That Which Has No Part for the Boston Review, Cole Swensen notes Waldner’s skill at using “language at the very end of its tether.” Swenson observes “a thrilling tension and an almost visceral suspense” in the poetry. Admiring her craft, Swenson points out that Waldner “capitalizes on rhyme, off-rhyme, rhythm, and alliteration, and turns language into a muscled force that controls the choices she makes.”

A reviewer for Publishers Weekly applauds Waldner’s ability to mix “sassiness, smarts and lyricism, intellectual querulousness with personal bitterness, vigor and exasperation.” Despite what this reviewer calls a propensity for “metalinguistic obsessions,” the poems in this collection never “prevent [Waldner] from seeing a real world with people in it.” The reviewer recommends this “debut” as...