Fruits & Vegetables, Jong's first book, was a sweet beginning for an exciting new poet. The title poems are rich and garden-fresh…. The images are fleshy, organic. They emanate from an observant and productive woman who enjoys growing bountiful fruit and vegetable poems for her readers….

Intriguing concepts about male-female relationships originate in Half-Lives…. On the other hand, her list poems begin to lose their effect in Half-Lives. In "Paper Cuts" and "Men," for example, an enjoyable humor is present with fairly interesting insights, but the all-too-frequent psychological conclusions now seem cute, too clever, and too facile.

In Loveroot, list poems or lists within poems appear even more often. They seem to be a pat way to render what could otherwise be a more significant emotional exploration. (p. 94)

In poems like "Wrinkles" or "Sexual Soup," a prose-like style adds to the too-simple representation of emotions…. Too easy pronouncements of feeling occur most often at the ends of poems….

It is almost as if Ms. Jong is trying, at times, to wind up a psychological session with herself within each given poem…. Even in poems with no lists, everything is often too well explained and neatly concluded….

Despite her exhortations to herself to let go, to declare herself for joy, Ms. Jong has perhaps too much control. (p. 95)

Jong is best when her exhortations to herself succeed, and she lets the poem explode, go out to play, though it appear ragged and bleeding, startlingly honest….

Despite some cuteness and a tendency to polish her endings off like shiny offerings to the all-wise psychologists, Ms. Jong is often profound, revealing deeply what it is to be a woman or a poet. (p. 96)

Though at times I cannot accept conventional psychological insights used as pat poetic presentations, I want to hear more from Erica Jong. I want to hear her poems aloud, enjoy their playfulness and joy, their search for the shadows within. She has come clearly and beautifully home to me. (p. 97)

[At the Edge of the Body] expands beyond feminism to include attitudes toward death, the body, animals, Zen, and [Jong's] travels. While the persona seems more at peace with herself, her art contains less tension and complexity. Her whimsical, inventive way with metaphor is still present, but compared to her earlier work these poems are thin, lapsing into facile or self-indulgent assertions.