Instead of Sadness, poems by Catherine Abbey Hodges, is the winner of the inaugural Barry Spacks Poetry Prize. The Spacks Prize honors poet and teacher Barry Spacks, Santa Barbara's first Poet Laureate, who valued poems with clarity of image, precision of language, and emotional resonnance.

Instead of Sadness

Literature & Fiction

Hodges, Catherine Abbey

Poetry

Gunpowder Press

There is a brilliant subtlety to this witnessing, a knowing tenderness that explores our relationships with the natural world and those we love. These poems exalt the moment and explore the geography of memory, with a spare clarity that evokes our finest lyric poets' imaginations.
 --Lee Herrick, author of Gardening Secrets of the Dead
Because she's honed the art of looking inward and outward at the same time in Raft of Days, Catherine Abbey Hodges writes poems that manage to be small and also large, quiet while eventful, realistic yet reverent, both evocative and clear. Her poetry produces more than pleasure. It is an antidote to despair.
--Susan Cohen, author of A Different Wakeful Animal
In Catherine Abbey Hodges' second collection of poems, . . . the complexities of faith huddle close to the ordinary work of cooking, making lists, and keeping a steady breath. This is an authentic and beautiful book.
 --Emma Trelles, author of Tropicalia

Raft of Days

Catherine Abbey Hodges' In a Rind of Light takes us into the territory of memory, where "in a distant city," someone falls down stairs and makes "a song of it," where siblings speak of family secrets that make breathing different, where selflessness is the mother's gift to her children.&nbsp; These poems are close and personal, affectionate.&nbsp; Certainly, there is sadness in this work, loss, and dwelling upon loss.&nbsp; However, in these "prayers into the past," mistakes being the pathways to how we find our lives, Hodges makes "even the poorest thing" shine.

In a Rind of Light

Stephen F. Austin University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hodges, Catherine Abbey. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hodges, Catherine Abbey

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hodges, Catherine Abbey. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Instead of Sadness

Raft of Days

In a Rind of Light