James Tate's … [Riven Doggeries] contains few surprises, is thoroughly in the mode of his increasingly extravagant previous work …, and [from the start of the title poem] we are off and running into an art which not only resists paraphrase but actively cultivates the resistance. Tate's practice is nowhere less than professional, his manner always self-assured even when (as is usually the case) not much of a future for the self is seen…. (p. 295)

Tate is not one to stay around for a long conversation with the reader. If his brisk insouciance is appealing …, it can also feel a bit relentless. One wonders if perhaps he's all "outer," and whether since the "inner" has been thoroughly suppressed or unexpressed, there is as much play in the poems as first appears…. Admirers of John Ashbery will perk up their ears…. But when it's all surprise, never a line but what one could never have predicted, it becomes all too easy to take in anything without blinking. So the surprise gets dissipated; it's just James Tate, doing his thing once more. (p. 296)