Most literary critics agree that Gallagher's Moon Crossing Bridge, the collection from which "I Stop Writing the Poem" is taken, was a difficult project to undertake. The emotions entailed in pursuing the grief and sense of loss after experiencing the death of a loved one are often so overwhelming that there can be a tendency for the author to become excessively sentimental. Although critics have found that flaw in some of the poems in Gallagher's collection, most have also found gems. There were, in fact, so many gems, that the American Library Association named the collection their 1993 Notable Book in poetry.

In spite of the flaws, several literary magazines responded to this collection favorably, commending the collection for its lyrical style, one of Gallagher's strongest expressive forms. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly writes that the best poems in this collection "evoke the ambiguous life of the...