Jendi Reiter's work has appeared in Best American Poetry 1990, and in many journals including Poetry, The New Criterion, Southern Poetry Review, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Pavement Saw, Hanging Loose, First Things, The Lyric, The Christian Century, The Saint Ann's Review, Cider Press Review, A New Song, U. S. Catholic, The Rose & Thorn, About Such Things, Grasslands Review, Alaska Quarterly Review and Clackamas Literary Review. She has won two awards for her poetry from the Poetry Society of America, as well as the 2002 Mildred Werba Prize from the Baltimore Writers' Alliance.

About A Talent for Sadness:

"Jendi Reiter's poems are smart about nature and humanity. In one deft move wet leaves are said to hang heavily on their branches 'the way a lazy hand hangs over the edge of the bed.' Reiter's poetry is full of such observations and are alive with curiousity about experience and ideas. There's a lot of trouble here too, a 'bound bride,' a 'woman left on the ground,' a diver who goes so far down he can breath again. Human life is hard here, but the poems always find relief in the return to the natural world and to the world of thought. I look forward to seeing what Reiter will do next!"
—Jennifer Michael Hecht

"Jendi Reiter has a sharpened sense of image which, if percieved as a coffee filter, holds a strong uncommon grind of realism inside and jacks up the reader with each distilled page of finished product."
—David Baratier