In this, his second collection of poetry, Adam Hughes continues to weave a tapestry of language. In these poems are found words that illuminate, words that cheer and fulfill, words that inspire longing, words that commemorate, and words that revel in the glory of uncertainty. In his pursuit of the holy, Hughes utters words both profound and common, romantic and rational, hopeful and hopeless. Through it all the voice of the Other whispers and all of creation sings through children, grasshoppers, men on fire, escaped hijackers, and a host of other voices all uttering the holy. |
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Adam Hughes makes sublime use of myth & epic, also working adeptly with the "stuff"—images and references—of contemporary life; he never forgets, however, that the immediate & fleeting are a manifestation of a broader, immutable, & regenerative life-energy: Eros itself. Hughes does indeed "utter the holy." In fact, these poems are ultimately invocations, paeans to the eternal. I congratulate Mr. Hughes on a job well done.
—John Amen, editor of Pedestal Magazine; author of At the Threshold of Alchemy
Adam Hughes' new book, Uttering the Holy, offers a glimpse of the unexpectedly sacred: a potato bug in search of darkness, a moth circling the stars, a daughter's silence. Writing in voices that dance between lyrical and narrative, transcendent and ordinary, these poems chronicle the fierce pursuit of answers to our most universal questions. Hughes is fearless when facing life's messes and bravely shares hard truths learned through experience, reminding us how, "change always comes / with a limp." A paradox of poems, Uttering the Holy simultaneously bows in reverence to death and leaps with hopeful abandon.
—Laura E. Davis, editor of Weave Magazine; author of Braiding the Storm
Adam Hughes' poems take place in a world on fire where the shadows creep east and mercy is found in a lion’s mouth. These poems listen attentively to the world, to a child's breath in a baby monitor, to the wind, to God's slow exhale. Nothing escapes Hughes' gaze. He populates his work with remoras, moths, flying foxes, five-legged grasshoppers, and wasps dying on garage floors. There's never enough time to decipher "the unwritten words on the wall," but these poems keep singing to a God that gave us all the grace He could spare.
—Traci Brimhall, author of Our Lady of the Ruins
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