Dobyns's poem “It's like This” was published in the collection Velocities, which the Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman describes as a book that “takes us on a journey into territories both mythical and commonplace.” Velocities contains material from eight previous volumes of poetry plus several new and previously unpublished poems. As Seaman points out, the title of this collection is significant because most of the poems are about movement of one sort or another. Seaman compares this movement to that of water, “which can move at many speeds and fill any space.”

In an article called “Story Tellers,” published in the American Poetry Review, Louise Glück, a poet herself, analyzes Dobyns's poetry and also describes it in terms of motion, saying that his poems take “a rapid downward trajectory.” She goes on to state that Dobyns's poetry overall is “apocalyptic” and continues with the statement...