Bob Holman: Now that spoken word and performance poetry have pushed poetry back into the public eardrum, now that poetry slams and hip hop, Billy Collins and Garrison Keillor have all conspired to create a US Poetry Renaissance, dear Larry Goodell can lean back on his caterpillar legs and other poetry costumes and ask, "Where ya been?" Goodell, as unknown at 70 as he was at 20, has a half-century's worth of revolutionary poetics under his belt, and is laughing all the way to Utopia. Nobody has done more, nor been recognized less, than this Legend of Placitas, New Mexico. (2005)

 

Gino Sky, the Cowboy Buddha, says, Since the "Sixties," Larry Goodell has kept that "spirit" alive. And, he continues getting stronger and more significant in his life and writings. He is a real poet. A true poet who has never once taken the academic way out. He is what we all strove for when we first started on our quests as revolutionary poets. Walt Whitman stuffed in our back pockets, Francois Villon, Emily Dickenson, John Keats, William Blake, Tillie Olsen, Rosalie Sorrels. Poetry's a revolution, and Larry's our peace-loving drum major." 

 

Jimmy Santiago Baca: He howls and luxuriates in the coyote yelp, he returns to the reader the gift of happiness and vibrancy he infuses his language with

 

Bobby Byrd: For something like 60 years now, Larry Goodell has been the Poet of our Conscience. It's an ancient occupation, and Larry does not shirk his responsibilities. Love poems. Garden poems. Sorrow poems. Political rants. Joyful life celebrations. Wherever his quirky imagination takes us, he is always reminding of our place on this precarious Spaceship Earth as it navigates around the sun and through the universe. Enjoy his poems, always be ready to laugh out loud, but, please, pay close attention. Take heed. This is important work.

 

Ricardo Sanchez: He enunciates a poetics of madness and joy, of celebration and realization –  and the words seem to dance from him. Everything becomes a work of poetical art, very political in its sense of the power and magic of language.