“From the deeply moral and radical qualities of her first book to spectacular new poems, Vollmer has created a body of work singular in American poetry. With the sense, intellect, sound, tone, rhythm, and music only the most real and truest poetry provides, The Sound Boat embodies, on every level, the regions of the human soul.”—Lawrence Joseph
“Always at the center of Vollmer’s poems is her love and connection to the people she learned from: mothers, fathers, poets, artists, teachers, workers, literary ancestors, freedom fighters, and revolutionaries. You’ll find Thurgood Marshall in a poem with Rachel Carson; Rilke with Camus. No poet has captured more vividly that place that Pavese describes: the place that one ‘has it in his blood beyond anyone else’s understanding.’”—Toi Derricotte
“Beautifully cooked and served, full of harmonic oscillations, as transporting and philosophical as it is grounded and sensual. Vollmer is a poet in love with the world, real, imagined, terrestrial and atmospheric, and her poetry works in varied and magical ways. . . . The Sound Boat privileges its reader with poems that span decades, a body of work that startles and enchants with honest longing and love, all laid bare.”—Plume