"In a wry, arch, self-consciously Eliotic voice, Gewanter attempts in this second collection to chart a vexed moral universe. Socially conscious lyrics that pick up from Robert Lowell juxtapose the classical with the contemporary. Yet the overall impression that the book leaves is of a seriousness and rigor in trying to find a means to moral clarity."

Publishers Weekly

"The Sleep of Reason is a strong collection from a writer who seems to possess that most curious and necessary of literary attributes--a moral vision."

New York Times Book Review

"The poems . . . are unapologetically eclectic and intellectual, yet never inaccessible. Gewanter tempers his scholarship with humor and irony, a combination which produces some truly beautiful results."

Kathleen Rooney | Harvard Review

"Gewanter’s stunned clarity, his sense of poetry’s ethical possibilities, goes beyond the fragile comic pleasure of his poems."

Brian Phillips | Poetry