Reviews

“Perhaps you shall not again glance upon a mushroom without recalling the extraordinarily imaginative feats of Dawn Hogue. The same may be said of wind, for she has via a metaphysical conceit in her title poem, yet with language there clear as Elizabeth Bishop’s, summoned (as well as elsewhere) sounds at once soft and vibrant—all as if somehow in tribute to a Wallace Stevens definition of poetry: to make the invisible visible to our otherwise blind eyes.”  —Karl Elder, author of  Earth as It Is in Heaven

“Friends, sit with Hogue’s poetry, a lakeside oasis in an unsettling world, for the presence of wild things content to nest, kids who’ve lost their shoes, old friends who harvest the gifts of patience, and the reliable cruelty of seasons swallowing their tail. You will not be sorry.” —Carrie La Seur, author of The Home Place and The Weight of an Infinite Sky

“These are the poems of a fascinated heart and mind, of lucid seeing and simple language that celebrates both nature and our part in it. Broken up by season, Painting South Pier does more than merely describe the earth’s subtle and not-so-subtle changes; it paints an intimate human portrait rooted in ecstatic love for all things bright and not-so-bright. A quiet, humble wisdom hums from within each poem, as does a refreshingly sanguine yearning to ‘shout life in spring’s cold sun.’” — John Sibley Williams, author of As One Fire Consumes Another