“Like Eve in his 'Serpent's Rebuttal' Stephen Maurer takes a kind of refuge in doubt—about the axioms of psychoanalysis, religious consolation, gender assumptions, our whole tribal dance of motives. Maurer examines the world of psychoanalysis with candor, self-mockery, and a trenchant humor, while inventing a voice poetry hasn't heard before.”
Joseph Powell Hard Earth and Fish Grooming & Other Stories

“Stephen Maurer, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, writes with deceptive ease, employing a conversational tone and offering tender perceptions of family, friends, and patients. However, at its core, this collection is a relentless exploration of mortality. It traces the dissipation of a human life, from the poet's birth in the opening poem to his dissolution into spectrality in the final one. Permeating that decline is an understated, constant fear of the Word blazing Law into human flesh through the ear, and it is precisely that violence which leaves Maurer's readers haunted, grappling, as it were, with the afterlife of Side Effects.”
Seth Michelson House in a Hurricane

“...well-crafted free verse poems shaped by tension... as the narrative of each poetic vignette progresses, the reader is mesmerized by Maurer's carefully chosen, alliterative diction as his plots thicken, the tension building with each poignant strophe. The reader is then delighted as the tension in each piece is resolved by an entertaining, often unexpected, and always thought-provoking ending.”
James Wilk The Seven-Year Night: Poems of the Medical Training Experience