Alan Williamson, "Meditations on Activism," Tikkun, May-June 2010, 66-67, http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/may2010williamson: As he becomes increasingly disillusioned about the possibilities of institutional politics, he is more and more drawn toward religion and (in "Secular Prayer" and some of his recent prose) toward faith-based utopian hopes. In this, as he well knows, he resembles some of the great ancestors he often invokes -- the Dante of Paradiso, Milton, Pound. Scott's religion is of a peculiarly attractive kind, rooted in Buddhist meditation but reaching out empathetically toward his wife's Judaism, his childhood Christianity, and Islam. I suspect many readers of Tikkun, like me, will be delighted to encounter it, after the militant secularism that afflicted the Left during the Bush years. Whether or not we believe it can transform politics, it certainly cannot hurt our political behavior. Scott's lovely poems about meditation ("Breathing Exercise" and "Commuting to the Land of Medicine Buddha") are also important, it seems to me, because they take American Buddhist poetry a step beyond the earlier, Gary Snyder tradition, in concentrating less on moments of enlightenment than on the troubled Western ego struggling, breath by breath, with distraction and psychological fears. Finally, I wouldn't want to leave this book without noting that some of the best poems, from a purely lyrical point of view, are the more personal ones, that don't try to transcend the facts of aging and loss. "Pelican" is a small masterpiece....

J.A. Weingarten, Matrix: "The true strength of Scott's collection.... is the way in which he transcends the subjective world he constructs for himself and engages (through extreme intertextuality....) with the world at large....Scott provides what is indeed a mosaic and uses this foundation to develop a vivid and often Buddhist philosophy toward the political disasters of our shattered present….Indeed, his poems are artfully broken bridges between the past and the present, all of which illuminate both the difficulties of and the desire for worldly and emotional order. In his undertaking, Scott contrasts his somberness with stirring charisma, rendering a world that is at once personal and far-reaching, a mosaic that is, as Scott says of history, perpetually `loveable.'"

Fraser Sutherland, "Between the political yang and the spiritual yin," Globe and Mail [Toronto], April 13, 2009: : As much as one welcomes substantive political poetry that is not mere attitudinizing, the personal, recollective, almost conversational poems make the most impact. The charming, wryly humorous The Power of Prayer concerns his Uncle Arthur....Russia, China, Latin America, the Middle East, all the disunited nations, are present if not altogether accounted for, because Scott is ever mindful of the thick fog of political circumstances in which we dwell. Thailand, with its past deforestation and present-day drug trafficking, looms especially large with its blend of the tragic internal displacements of its population and the upward trajectory of its economy....For someone who has been so involved in public forums, the heir of public men, this is one way to come to peace with his solitary self."

James Reid, "Mosaic Orpheus," Off the Shelf, September-October, 2009, p.6: "Mosaic Orpheus opens with the memories in `Seven Canadian Poems,' the first of which was so utterly Canadian in the gentle unwinding of its humour that I found myself laughing out loud. Then I tried to remember the last time I laughed out loud while reading a poem. It's been a while.... `The Tao of 9/11'[:] This remarkable poem is the book's sustained and ruthless centrepiece.... A few pages after the conclusion of this dark poem, Scott reminds us of Dante's and Milton's wager on how to live, `that to live in hope/ we must let go of our torments.' In the face of looming torments, letting go and choosing to do what we do best, may be best."