"Humor, though, makes these poems stand out. Covey's humor is quirky, paratactic, and interesting. He throws in lines that seem to come from nowhere, like "If your socks wear out, try my yellow ones" or "Is Hart Crane a style of kung fu?" The lines come at us sideways, so we have to step back and see what's happening."

— William Allegrezza at Galatea Resurrects

"Elapsing Speedway Organism is aswirl with things & people. It's poppy & busy. There are crowds. Tourists, often. (Americans in otherwhere mirrors.) Attractions (in multiple senses). Everyday objects rendered in cartoony strokes, somehow miniaturized, & all giving off beeps & waves. (We're to tune in, find the frequency & pick up each clear-singing poem.) Idioms, superstitions, fortunes (as in cookies), forecasts, gaming odds, instructions, percentages of chance, flight numbers, the facts & wishes that electrify a life, marking or tweaking it as it goes speeding along."

— Shanna Compton

"ESO, not to be confused w/ ELO, is the kind of poetry book that reminds you that the New York School style still has a reason to be pursued. And I don’t mean the John Ashbery by way of James Tate elliptical mess that young MFA’d poets produce because they don’t want to take the time to edit, but rather the “poem showing its structure on its sleeve” style of Kenneth Koch or early Ron Padgett."

— Dustin Williamson

"Elapsing Speedway Organism affords many pleasures. It can be goofy (rhyming “gargle” with “marbles”); and it can be keen (“If the dollars don’t add up, drop your signifying”). Covey has a talent for recontextualizing the everyday, most brilliantly in his many list-poems. Popular culture, food, travel, it’s all here. And what better way to humble Romantic sublimity than this: “I want to wrap my claws around the uninterrupted sky / And pull it down around me in a puddle at my ankles.”"

—Jennifer Moxley

"Bruce Covey's delightful and willfully eccentric writing combines the giddy weightlessness of the information age with a barrage of tactile feedback. His poems are both hi-tech and low-rent, offering “14 Kung Fu Climaxes” as well as instructions that coach us to “Ride into the electric descent.” I guarantee you'll notice a shiny new angle, curious corner, or “charismatic fold” every time you open this book."

—Elaine Equi