[How the Dead Count] is characterized by a catchy title and unusual formal and technical discontinuities. There is great energy in How the Dead Count, a sense of excitement founded in the pure process of creation, in the lively expressiveness of form, and in her verbal and grammatical pyrotechnics. But these elements are often achieved without concern for end results.

Sherwin's book is not the sort lovers of the closed lyric will find easy going. It undercuts many of our shared assumptions about the poet's office…. [In a book this long] the levelling effect of her post-modernist stance is deadening because it forces her to treat most experiences in virtually the same way. This proceeds from the solipsistic nature of the speaker. The bulk of her poems are informed by the proposition that the "i" (rarely capitalized) can inhabit vague space, that the fictive landscape does not have to be tied to the shared world, and that it is viable only because she wills it. (pp. 174-75)

Sherwin is preoccupied with phenomenological metaphors for the self, notably enclosed places and mirrors. While these are fascinating, they are also seductive. "Looking in the Mirror" is not a poem, but a trivial observation. Her subject is inwardness, not interiorization: "the eye / that sees the mind / is not / the I that minds." In "Three Poses" she returns to the mirror twice, and it becomes the image of connectiveness between the deep aspects of self and the reflected world, the place of meaning in a threatening environment, where "two selves will move one pulse, one inside one." So if Sherwin is solipsistic, it should be noted that for her the world exists in the poem she makes and is not always prior to it. This explains the parable-like quality of "Three Power Dances," "The Intellectual Pilgrim," "The Dissolution," and "The Imitation of Death."

For all her studied contemporaneity, Sherwin has a sacramental vision. In the sixth and final section, her narcissism is replaced by a genuine recognition of personal and shared grief, suffering, and death…. ["How the Dead Count"] gives ample evidence of the high seriousness, formal boldness, and rhythmic cadence Sherwin can attain…. (p. 175)