Here I’d assumed one poem about jacaranda blossomsunderfoot would be my lifetime quota. But that missesthe point, since I know I won’t know till I’m well inor done what the thing is about, that filament, shred of incandescence, essenceto which, if anything can get close, it will be a poem feeling its way, talking to itself between silences.I’m here for that, or in the next room, ear to the wall. Spendthrift world, it’s me again, listening hard,talking you up, extolling your gullies and beetles, your bruisedblossoms on the pavement, the ones that bloomand bloom even once they’re dust.
Bloom and Bloom
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“Bloom and Bloom” from EMPTY ME FULL: by Catherine Abbey Hodges.
Published by Gunpowder Press on October 01, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 by Catherine Abbey Hodges.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Catherine Abbey Hodges is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Empty Me Full (Gunpowder Press, 2024), and two chapbooks. Her first full-length collection, Instead of Sadness, won the 2015 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize; recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Birmingham Poetry Review, Inflectionist Review, Plume, SALT, Plant-Human Quarterly, RockPaperPoem, Gyroscope Review, Tar River Poetry, CALYX and elsewhere. She’s a staff reader for SWWIM and an advisory editor for Anacapa Review. English Professor Emeritus at Porterville College, Catherine writes, teaches privately, and collaborates with musician Rob Hodges in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada.
www.catherineabbeyhodges.com
“The poems in Catherine Abbey Hodges’ Empty Me Full ask deep and necessary questions of both the speaker and her readers. How to define clarity? What is sorrow, and why must we accept it? Who best explains faith? And even, ‘Does it matter?’ But everything matters to this poet, and she hungers for a response, if not an easy resolution; ‘Spendthrift / world, it’s me again, listening hard, ‘ she writes. This beautifully paced book is a lovely, inviting incantation to notice, to be aware, to live this world ‘a little more awake, ‘ and to always query, ‘how did we / get here? And can we stay forever?’”
—Jen Karetnick
"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 as she looks back over a life-loss of parents and recollection of girlhood pleasures, long marriage and motherhood. 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...”
—Barbara Rockman
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