Philip Levine has written that Don Barkin's work shows "wonderful skill." The Rail Stop at Wassaic bears out that assessment. Like the poet's previous book, Houses, it is "both domestic and fierce, accessible and resonant, including many poems that have the audacity to follow traditional patterns of rhyme and meter." Barkin's earlier volume, That Dark Lake, was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award, presented under the aegis of the Library of Congress.