According to Lisa Vihos in
Verse Wisconsin, "Balbo...gives shape and heft to the formless, fleeting past both historical and personal through his rich language." In reviewing
The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems for
JMWW, Patricia Valdata observes that Balbo's work "raises difficult questions about home, about the relationship of parent to child, about a society's responsibility to its poor." Writing in
Studio, Lucas Jacob notes that in
The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems, "Balbo...reminds us of the grace we find in our time with each other on this 'island' of life on Earth."
Lesley Wheeler, writing on-line in
Kenyon Review, asserts that "Balbo’s complicated sense of place and his poetic resourcefulness make [
Upcycling Paumanok] worth your time, but what impresses me most are the extended narrative lyrics, the first of which appears several pages in. Balbo’s deftness at balancing story and music is often breathtaking." In his essay "Ned Balbo's Family Narrative," published in his blog and in
Birmingham Poetry Review, David Katz writes, "Although Balbo’s prosodic and formal mastery enable him to rise to lyrical heights in individual poems, there’s a complex family narrative — call it a personal mythology — running through the entire body of work, starting with his first book, ''Galileo's Banquet
, that resonates powerfully from poem to poem as well as with the outside world." Katz argues, "Following 3 Nights of the Perseids
— a veritable book of forms... — [The Cylburn Touch-Me-Nots''] is a breakthrough for Balbo, a blossoming of the poet’s essential content...[H]e emerges with a freshness of tone in the newer book, in which overt formal virtuosity recedes in favor of a more spontaneous musicality and openness of emotion." Balbo has written in a variety of
forms, including
blank verse, sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, and nonce forms, as well as
free verse. ==Awards==