“In ‘Love Poem to the Phrase Let’s Get Coffee,’ Catherine Pierce writes ‘I adore your elegant manner, one hand on the car door, the other on the ass.’ She writes with her own tricky elegance, one that acknowledges yet adores language’s self-serving grace. Pierce deftly blends repetition with sophisticated syntax, and a sinister wit glows inside the emotional wisdom of her vision. Animals of Habit is an exhilarating book.”—Andrew Hudgins

“If I didn’t know the poet personally, I’d think the name Catherine Pierce was a pseudonym, for these poems are not merely edgy, they are razor-sharp-they disembowel. What an extraordinary command of structure, persona, and humor this poet has! In one fell swoop, she has re-invented the ‘love’ poem and eschewed both pretentiousness and the anti-intellectual by being always smart and entertaining.”—Kathy Fagan