CUMBERLAND, Maine - s4story -- Deborah Cummins new poetry collection is Until They Catch Fire. She is the author of two poetry collections, and a collection of personal essays. Her poems and essays have appeared in six anthologies and numerous literary magazines, including Orion, Fourth Genre, Yale Review, Shenandoah, and Gettysburg Review. Her poems have also been featured on The Writer's Almanac, and Maine Public Radio's Poems From Here, and more. Her numerous awards include a James Michener Fellowship, the 2013 and 2012 Maine Literary Award for Short Works in Nonfiction and a Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance 2013 Book Award Finalist. She's also been the recipient of artist residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell Coloony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In 2007, she was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome.

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 Ted Kooser, has this to say about Deborah as poet:
"Cummins is a poet with both hands in plain sight. No manipulative literary affections, no illustrations of theory, no personal mission other than to address us directly, with clarity, and, above all, with generosity."

From the Back Cover
"An alternate title for this accomplished full-length collection might well be "The New Order of Things," the name of one of the book's many poems that attempt to make peace with "the presence of an absence." As she faces loss, especially that of her brother ("I was older than [he] would ever be"), Cummins memorably captures the vexation of not being able to prevent, even delay, the inevitable. Her territory is woefully our territory, too, and these poems give voice to what we all experience as we struggle "to accommodate the truth." Part elegy, part love poem, Until They Catch Fire is an impressive collection by an always impressive writer." — Andrea Hollander, author of Blue Mistaken for Sky

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"A memory, Deborah Cummins tells us, is a mind-painting, and she paints her memories with the precision and beauty of the Old Masters. Until They Catch Fire is a gallery of stunning mind-paintings, many of them about the heart-rending loss of her brother and mother. Their absence is a palpable presence in these poems, but ultimately the book is, as the title of one poem puts it, "A Griever's Reference Manual," and it can help us fellow grievers face down the darkness and begin to rise again, like green shoots of grass after a fire, into the beautiful "cathedral of light" that is this world. These are essential poems. Do not miss them."
—David Jauss, author of Improvising Rivers

Visit https://www.deerbrookeditions.com/until-they-catch-fire to order
https://www.deborahcummins.com/books is the authors site