“The final poem of the book, from which the title comes, is really the perfect culmination of the life journey the previous poems have taken us on. From boy to teen to young newlywed, from suburbs to city to ultimately a mountain lifestyle that somehow suits the poet as well as oxygen, we have seen firsthand the evolution and maturing of one human being. The transformation hasn't been accomplished without error, and the poems don't try to hide mistakes made along the way. It's a nostalgia tale told with compassion and without apology. In the final poem the poet encounters a ruffed grouse on a hike, and describes its strange behavior, leaving open the question of its true identity: Oh yes, I remembered that look,/ unblinking, undeterred, unashamed/of being in charge, yet being in love.

Nixon's poetry combines air and earth, fire and water into a balanced surface, textured and firm, variegated and vast. Always, the Catskills loom behind, as a destination, a home, and a center for his own personal universe, still being explored.”

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From a review of When I Had It Made in the Woodstock Times by Michael Perkins:

“In When I Had It Made, the poet, with seeming effortlessness, introduces us to a range of characters and experiences familiar to everyone, but he does so in knotty, tangy language, with metaphors that constantly surprise: Dead wasps lay like peanut shells on dusty windowsills/in the country house after your father died he writes in “Dead Wasps, Black Trees, Sugar Stars,” and somehow gets from that beginning to this wonderful conclusion: I knew it took blind luck/to catch a meteor, so I admired the sugaring of stars,/the blinking jet pulling a smoky contrail of moonlight./The passengers tucked warmly behind their windows—I wondered/if they knew they were missing heaven.

When I Had It Made is more than an auspicious debut, it is a delightful introduction to a poet everyone should meet.”