Books

Empty Me Full

“Empty Me Full is an invitation to intimate conversation with a wise and affectionate seeker. But Catherine Abbey Hodges is no common questioner. Hers is a wit-laced and vulnerable wondering. Exhilarated by relationship with human, animal, earth and sky, in language honed with care and cadence, her surprising turns of thought and discovery deepen our shared humanity. Without being sentimental, the book is rich with sentiment. Without dictating belief, the collection inspires reverence for the greater-than-human. In poems that turn grief to awe and sadness to wonder, the poet celebrates our stunning, imperfect lives.”

–Barbara Rockman, author of to cleave

In a Rind of Light

“In a Rind of Light is a book about memory, grief, and narrative itself—the stories we tell ourselves, the versions we offer others, the family secrets we tuck away, and the songs we make of the life we live. Catherine Abbey Hodges proves herself deft and original with language while thematically exploring its power—how naming a thing suggests mastery of the subject, a deep knowledge; how reckoning with the past on the page is a way of ‘writing our doors’ and then walking through them.”

–Maggie Smith, author of Good Bones

Instead of Sadness

“In Catherine Abbey Hodges’ Instead of Sadness, the beauty is there as the bread of life, as the poems enter and grow in us. They effect their changes in us subtly and steadily, convincing us that their perceptions and discoveries are our own—which, when we have given them our full attention, is exactly right.”

–Dan Gerber, author of Particles: New and Selected Poems

Raft of Days

“There is a brilliant subtlety to this witnessing, a knowing tenderness that explores our relationships with the natural world and those we love. The poems in Raft of Days exalt the moment and explore the geography of memory with a spare clarity that evokes our finest lyric poets’ imaginations.”

–Lee Herrick, author of Scar and Flower