Intermittent Sacraments by Mary Hills Kuck

The poet Mary Kuck finds grace in unlikely places. In a pandemic, as she takes to dressing “in black beneath . . . stay-home clothes,” a young plum tree in the yard “sprouts hope / in delicate ivory blooms” and elsewhere, with hardy spirit, she waits out a drought. Yet she finds much to praise as well. If your mind opens easily to wonder, if your eye is keenly observant, your ear sensitive and musical, your language agile and earthy—as are this poet’s— then a small first collection like Intermittent Sacraments is as natural as “the moon / [that] spins lace” and as felicitous as “fall/ leaves [that] rustle with turning.” I suspect Mary Kuck is describing herself in her poem “Woman on the Train”— a mature, travel-weary woman who  nonetheless might just “start to boogie” and jive, or “just caper to the exit, / cha-cha to the escalator, / whirl up onto Park Street, / twist right out of sight.”  She is a poet who even in final departure will know how to “sing glory, glory, glory.”

–Zara Raab, author of Fracas & Asylum and Swimming the Eel

I have always been amazed at how Mary Hills Kuck consistently uncovers the amazing within the apparently ordinary elements of nature and our moments in time.  Intermittent Sacraments discovers the remarkable and holds it up for us to inspect and consider anew. Whether sharing scarce rainwater with deer-trampled ferns in the middle of a drought or dancing inexplicably yet joyfully on a train, Mary is a poet whose voice looks to share the sacred moments she finds in the life around her.  As she concludes in her poem, Glory, about a couple considering which of the two might die first, Mary Hills Kuck declares with hope and grace, “I’ll pull you through / sing glory, glory, glory.”

–Barry Harris, Editor, Tipton Poetry Journal