Sky Under the Roof: Poems

Hilda Downer s splendid new book of poems does just what its title promises. It magically melds the realm of the natural world its mystery, its unbridled impulse toward the sacred with the daily offices of domestic life deep in the mountains of Downer s beloved Appalachia. Her language has the wondrous lyric simplicity of Ezra Pound s translations of Li Po coupled with the sophisticated iambic beat of a balladeer. She roots us in a present that claims its past like a ghost stumbling back into its body. Like a conjure woman, speaking in tongues, she invokes the names of her ancestors and the land from which they sprung. SKY UNDER THE ROOF brings it all back, restored, and rareified in the preternatural light of Downer s dazzling poetry. Joseph Bathanti, Poet Laureate of North Carolina