"In Catherine Abbey Hodges' Instead of Sadness the beauty is there as the bread of life, as the poems enter and grow in us - the kind of experience we come to expect in good poems - the feeling of 'Ah yes, that's right'.... 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 Sailing through Cassiopeia
"Catherine Abbey Hodges' Instead of Sadness is a book to savor. One can't rush through these poems; they're not built for speed.... Calm and meditative, lyrical, structured more by the shift of images than by events, her poems carry a human and spiritual resonance of what is 'signed and wondrous' long after they close."
- Peter Everwine, author of Listening Long and Late
"Catherine Abbey Hodges offers us - inside each musical line, within each vibrant trope - a luminous wisdom. Each poem gives us a world 'replenished like a well // in blues and greens and wings.' That her poems are alive and making their way in our world is cause for much grateful celebration."
- Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emeritus
