Anthology of Awe & Wonder

In Anthology of Awe & Wonder, each ode, each murmuration, each sly revelation exists in a lexical realm all its own, pushing the limits of what the heart and the intellect can do. Camire sends the reader on one hundred raucous rides that always, as if by magic, gracefully resolve. This collection plumbs terrestrial soil while pressing its hand to the border wall of that other realm, daring to answer Jack Gilbert’s call to “risk delight.” In Camire’s hand, this dense, textured testament to wonder is deviously shadowed — it buzzes with a playfulness that belies its essential heartache. When awe unfolds its intricate geometries and shows its magnificent interiors, it can alter you. This stunning text does just that.

—Michelle Lewis, Animul/Flame, Winner of Marystina Santiestevan Book Prize

Whether Camire sings joyfully about salmon, radishes, or the stars, these poems leave us breathless and satiated. With compassion and linguistic playfulness, his poems leave us marveling at wonders like “supernovas of pumpkins and sheening moons of gourds, and a “hallowed raiment/of rain perambulating.” These poems allow us to see the world with the eyes of a poet in love with the world’s smallest wonders like “earthworms” or “the trinity of gold finch, butterflies, and bees” and even its predators “raiding woodchucks and tunneling skunks.” Yet, these poems also urgently remind us of the inescapable ecologies that demand our attention and acknowledgment if we are “to evolve beyond the/genocide that seems/to be in our genes” and answer the call to love and wonder instead.

—Marita O’Neill Evidence of Light, Moon Pie Press

With constant Walt Whitman-ish rhythm and word play, Dennis Camire’s poetry successfully mirrors and lends discovery to the world’s spinning-wheel of connections. The reader travels in dimensions that allow one to see the layered world as if in 3D, like a soothsayer gifted with a ‘second sight’ able to see beneath the surface, or past the stars. In the end you’ll see too, that which appears to be unrelated to us is often instead the precise syncopated dance between all life. There is no better poet to bring this message and connect those dots. Dennis’ use of delicious words and metaphors sails us through so that in the end, the reader experiences these poems, more than reads them. His unique style, his wonderful and sometimes comedic sense of humanity makes Anthology of Awe and Wonder a refreshingly provocative, delightful experience.

—Claire Hersom, Dreamscape, Moon Pie Press

I can never understand why his poems aren’t leapt for as soon as the concluding lines have formed on the page. Dennis is one of the few contemporary poets I read with real excitement rather than occasional mild interest.

—Michael Tarabilda, Gods and Goddesses, Bodhibard Editions

Praise for Combed by Crows:

Dennis Camire is an up and comer . . . The poems engage us with their promising titles and deliver with skill and energy.

—XJ Kennedy

Read a preview of some pages from this book below.