"[Baker’s] work evinces the moral courage of keeping still in the landscape: in our era of climate change, poetry’s mandate to measure the rhythms of the year has become a valuable form of witness. To read Baker’s poems . . . is to appreciate the full range of their formal resources, their attunement to cycles and processes rather than to mere outcomes and effects—their patience over the long haul."

- Dan Chiasson, “Poetry That Bears Witness to a Changing Natural World,” The New Yorker

"He understands the human story as part of a larger story of life. His rhythms are as alive to the roll and tang of syllables on the tongue as they are to the circulation of blood and sap. His poems respond deeply to life, and enlarge our imaginative responses to it."

- Judges’ citation, Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize