[In Transplants] Macdonald is outrageous, both monstrously literal and filled with wild conceits. She's savage and demure, desperate and ladylike;… she balances pain and comedy, specializes in gallows humor and a tone of sardonic deadpan neutrality, as if, understanding all, she does in fact forgive, as if the comic vanity of her anguish is evident to her under the aspect of eternity. Many of her poems are narrative fables, sometimes with nursery rhyme sources…. She has a number of poems about her mother (and perhaps her father too, in the guise of the awful Dr. Dimity), about the "Innard Life" ("They slice me open and pull out my organs which/Play Bach fugues, alternating with skating rink selections"), about stained glass women ("'She has a cutting wit,' they say./And I reply, 'To wit, to woo; cuckoo, cuckoo,'/Trying to make light, as a stained glass woman should"), about the world's biggest man, about detached retinas and bowls that took seven months to make, about her children and her men, and she always entertains, she's never dull, she's sprightly in her anguish, she doesn't insist too much, she's classical in her polish and wit and distance. She says not Behold my eloquent sorrow. How fortunate for you to witness the pain of so rare a one as myself but Listen to me and I'll help you digest your dinner in spite of my straits, which are as I hope we'll both admit funny as a crutch. (pp. 360-62)