A Matter of Dark Matter

In A Matter of Dark Matter, Kate Hutchinson explores the facets of darkness and invisibility. She makes "mattering" a polestar of her poetry, keeping a keen eye on the Earth as half-dark treasure; she laments the disappearance of birds and trees, shriveling ice masses, and mounding plastic. Hutchinson moves the dialogue with herself and the reader to measuring memories and experiences darkened by an ominous sense of invisibility-vulnerable students, a son who knows "the constant bruise of his heart," the disappearance of beloved "wild places," the challenges of body image. The poems are both composed and starkly intimate, but ultimately the reader joins the poet's triumph-full-out singing Eric Clapton in an empty grocery store, a "sawed-in-half woman stepping out of the box"-the small joys the poet relishes in these poems as she foot-stamps against invisibility. Hutchinson brings us hope that "the Earth whispers still."

~ Gail Goepfert, author of Self-Portrait with Thorns and This Hard Business of Living


'We must love something just enough,' declares Kate Hutchinson at the end of her poem, "Cold." This killer line, coming at the beginning of A Matter of Dark Matter, launches a journey through themes of fragility, vulnerability and impermanence with bravery and fiercely acute perception. Yet despite the shifting presence of a bird on the shoulder that demands its pound of flesh, she is able to assert in "Gentle Yoga," 'Our arms/and legs are made to move/across the earth, toward each other.' Never truer than in a time of COVID, this is the voice of a woman who has reclaimed herself, who never shrinks from the task at hand: to look, to see, to accept and ultimately, to be.

~ Peter Ludwin, winner of the 2016 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award for the poem "Wolf Concerto," and 2017 American Book Award nominee for Gone to Gold Mountain


A Matter of Dark Matter demonstrates Kate Hutchinson's versatility with its thought-provoking poems on science and social issues and poems inspired by her experiences as a child with a mother who was sick, as a confused teen, and as wife and teacher. She is deft at writing both free and formal verse. And sometimes a line (like "the bride waking with regret on her honeymoon") pops out and slaps the reader's face, but bits of humor and hope peek through like stars in a cloudy sky. I highly recommend this collection.

~ Wilda Morris, author of Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick and past-president of the Illinois State Poetry Society