“These poems are not all smoke. There are many glowing embers and a few blazing coals. Mrs Baker shows something of antique restraint and not a little of the newer and freer impulse.” C. M. Greene
+ Bookm 50:634 F ’20 140w
“Not ambitious in manner, Mrs Baker has the soundness and felicity of art to make her themes poetically alive.” W. S. B.
+ Boston Transcript p5 S 17 ’19 1400w + Cleveland p85 S ’20 20w
“Hers is a gentle gracefulness, a light timidity that succeeds most when it is least emphasized.” L: Untermeyer
+ Dial 68:532 Ap ’20 150w
“Mrs Baker’s metaphors from nature have an almost unexampled finesse. She draws down trees, birds, stars, prints them on her page with a diamond delicacy, heats and lights them into a tender, fiery transparency. Her ideas are often second-hand, and her ardors, sweet and genuine though some of them, particularly those for her children, may be, are not perhaps distinguished enough to wear well. The solid core of her work, however, though small, is fine.” M. V. D.
+ − Nation 110:76 Ja 17 ’20 220w
“‘Blue smoke’ is a book of happiness and hope. It is unpretentious, modest, and sincere. The poems read as though publication had been an afterthought; they were not written to catch an exclusive or ‘appreciative’ audience.”