“Szporluk’s fifth collection evokes an atmosphere as darkly portentous as that of Shakespeare’s play: the book is a wild, clever assembly of lyrics that work through a world of molder and rot, entrapment and transformation, love and—unabashedly—hate. The hallucinatory delight of many of the monologues in this book comes from the poet’s assumption of a variety of speakers who are not psychologized but rather realized at the level of language: in the poem ‘Gargoyle,’ we hear the strange dimeter of the speaker’s ‘feeble dream/ of a mauve wet gut/ of a unicorn-dove,’ or, in ‘Windmill,’ the circling music of heavy enjambment: ‘I can’t cry so I/ smack the extent/ of my face but I/ can’t so I hate/ the oblique of my/ vanes.’ Throughout the collection, Szporluk’s verse, which ranges from dreamy to strange to grotesque, sounds like neither Shakespeare’s pentameter, the rhythm of natural speech, nor like the free verse favored by most contemporary poets, but rather most resembles the clipped, rollicking incantation of the charm of Macbeth’s three witches. Desperate, dense, horrible, and lovely, Szporluk’s work is, to use those witches’ words, a similar ‘charm of powerful trouble.’” — Publishers Weekly

“Like Shakespeare’s play, Traffic with Macbeth is a fearless journey into the depths of myth, the human psyche, and often violence. There is a density to many of the poems, which at times renders them a bit opaque. Yet, so well-crafted are the lyrics that the hard shells of her images beg to be cracked. Images that are impenetrable are simultaneously beautiful and terrible and remind the reader of the artistry of mystery. However, no matter the difficulty of meaning, Szporluk’s tone always rings clear.” — Erik Fuhrer, NewPages

“That we have seen sparse, direct, hyper-paratactic lyricism like this before does not mean we ought not celebrate one of its most talented practitioners. Szporluk is a master of the brief lyric, that focused brand of poetic intelligence that seems but a wisp until it adheres to the soul. Indeed, while the sounds and sights of Traffic with Macbeth are undoubtedly grave and gorgeous, there is also something incantatory—elusively uncanny—in the work. The spell this book weaves is at first too slight to notice; soon enough, however, Szporluk’s dark magic alights on your shoulder and begins its terrible, sublime, irreversible whispering. Haunting and lovely.”— Seth Abramson, Huffington Post