Butterfly Nebula

Description: Gold Medal for the 2024 Illumination Book Award
Honorable Mention for the 2024 Catholic Media Association Book Award

Winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry, Butterfly Nebula reaches from the depths of the sea to the edges of space to chart intersections of the physical universe, the divine, the human, and the constantly unfolding experience of being "one thing in the act of becoming another." This collection of poems teems with creatures and cosmic phenomena that vivify and reveal our common struggle toward faith and identity. The longing and metamorphosis of the human heart and soul are reimagined in an otherworldly landscape of firework jellyfish, sea slug, stingray, praying mantis, butterfly and moth, moon and star, and celestial events ranging from dark matter and Kepler's Supernova remnant to a dozen classified nebulae. Our desire for purpose and renewal collides with the vast constellation of divine possibility in this collection, which invites the reader to enter a transformative world both deeply interior and embracing of the far-flung cosmos.

Review Quotes: "Butterfly Nebula is a rare creation of song and scar, of vulnerability and eco-consciousness, of emotional complexity and simple witness. In a world where empathy is under threat of erasure, these poems show us how 'dust become[s] the blood, ' how the heart can be a 'universal symbol, ' and how ours is inherently a 'liquid alphabet.' These poems take responsibility for themselves while reminding us of our own responsibilities to the world and each other. There's such sharpness to Hogan's metaphors, such richness to the world she builds for us, both defining and pushing against the edges of our shared human experience. 'It is said all flesh is grass' and 'that we are ashes / and to ashes we return, ' but Hogan knows the truth, uncertain as it may always be to us. 'A prophet folded may appear to be dead, ' but in the world of Butterfly Nebula, nothing is ever truly dead. These poems choose to both celebrate and mourn everything they touch. Even their own ghosts. Even that greater truth that always remains just slightly out of reach, that she refuses to stop reaching toward."--John Sibley Williams, author of Skin Memory