Diane Ward is among those rare poets...who have found new ways to address the political in lyric forms, creating a body of verse which opens the politics of language and consciousness to us rather than assuming to instruct.
--A.L. Nielsen on Relation

Diane Ward's new book ushers us into an imaginary movie, only to tell us we have never left. The precise declarative elegance of Ward's lines both critique the social forces of the spectacle and situate the reader in an autonomous milieau, at once public and private. Ward has discovered the means of exploiting poetic language which turns language into a moral force. She offers us, in our collaborative improvising as readers, a dignity equal to the authority of the writer. Her writing provides us with the means to name what otherwise impedes change. This Imaginary Movie is "no skin deep technology/ but a connected sifting of last things."
--Jerry Estrin

This is writing that is "skeptical spaces." It is visceral in a way that is out in front of (the persons) flesh, which is present only in negative space. Imaginary Movie sees by being without a visual construction. It makes motions that are "assenting hierarchy" 'imitating', which is actually resisting, that form (which is already formed).
--Leslie Scalapino