Description:
Witty, humorous, and oh so tender, Accidental Devotions reminds us that in the end, life is a brief devotion of moments--beautiful, accidental, and always--gone too soon.
Kelli Russell Agodon's latest collection, Accidental Devotions, seeks to find meaning in a world lit by screens and haunted by ghosts--both real and digital. Blending humor with vulnerability, these poems embrace the beautiful chaos of our relationships, of aging and being human. Here, explorations of desire, technology, and spirituality ring out like birdsong through a chapel. Sharp and playful, Accidental Devotions is for the quiet rebels and devoted readers--for those who carry ashes to the beach, ask Alexa for guidance, keep Emily Dickinson's book on the nightstand, or fall in love mid-sentence. With queer tenderness, and an ongoing devotion to desire, these poems make room for grief and joy, pleasure and struggle. The result: a dazzling, defiant field guide to staying human.
Review Quotes:
Praise for Accidental Devotions
"Her poems brim with her enthusiasm for life, but this is tempered by her keen feeling for the evanescence of things, the fleetingness of love and living, and the accompanying melancholy that often entails."--Charles Rammelkamp, North of Oxford
"An incandescent and tender exploration of what it means to be human in the confusion of contemporary life"--Maria Surrichio, Adroit Journal
"Accidental Devotions is a book of petalflamed seeking, splendored by the sinew and the speculation of connection. These poems insist on singing the many paths for closing a distance. Sometimes the way is lit by chance, sometimes by humor, and sometimes by deep grief, but always Agodon tracks the wisdom of knowing ourselves even one note closer to some other being navigating this bright but tumultuous living, already fading."--Geffrey Davis
"What vitality in these poems that are full of wild and wonderful metaphors and deft, surprising leaps. There are aching love poems and poems that speak to the ache of living: 'Tonight, ache has a name/and it's called existence.' There are poems that mourn for the desecration of the earth: 'Tonight, I'm wearing sorrow like a corset/you keep trying to unhook.' And there are witty observations about life and poetry: 'When in doubt--add plums to your poem, / never break a line on a bird's name.' I have a soft spot for poems that press pain up against humor and these poems are brilliant at that. Accidental Devotions is serious and delicious. Just what we need in these challenging times."--Ellen Bass
"To say that Accidental Devotions is passionate would be to say the truth--but what does that mean? Poems herein aren't afraid to take a public bus, like surrealist angels. In this America of ours, where loneliness is a statistical fact, a poem isn't shy to admit: 'I am wearing sorrow like a corset / you keep trying to unhook.' If the word 'passionate' is to be used to describe this book, one must add that such passion carries 'grief in a paper bag / with tiny handles.' These blessed tools of craft used here--tone and image--deliver us into the many lives of the heart, showing how we love, and why, even if 'ache has a name /and it's called existence.' And, despite it all, an older couple, on the dance floor, keeps dancing 'unaware / the music has ended--how they sway' into each other, letting the quiet lead. This is a brave book, one that shows us there is nothing accidental about Kelli Russell Agodon's devotions--but as we turn the pages, our own devotions might, perhaps, deepen. Bravo."--Ilya Kaminsky
"Reading the poems in Accidental Devotions is a form of flight. Agodon's mind and heart move quick, and these poems are full of verve, humor, passion, and a deep and abiding joy. Each one is a tour de force of falling apart and falling back in love with our gorgeous and complicated world. This book is simultaneously a votive on the of altar of the ordinary and also kissing Dickinson and Rilke in a cemetery filled with feathers. I am a devotee of each of these erotic, botanical, angelic lines, each one pressed and saved like any beauty you wish to hold forever. Read these poems. Let everything in."--Traci Brimhall