When a poet like Dawn Morrow arrives in the landscape of poetry, I am deeply grateful. Reading her fresh, vital writing, I want to celebrate the knowing craftsmanship that underlies the poems, and her attention to detail.

I love it when a poem begins with a statement of fact that evolves like a bud opening into flower so that the image is more than the sum of its parts. I love the poems' intricacies and intimacies, their sensuousness of detail as the writer reveals the complexity of relationships and the significance of life events. Such persuasive details and bold strokes are the tissue and bones at the center of her work. Sometimes the poems are raw with pain and regret, but a subtle music plays through them, like a musical continuo, a refrain that enlightens and gratifies. I am deeply grateful for the essential work of this emerging writer who deserves our total attention.

Luci Shaw, author of The Generosity and Reversing Entropy, Writer in Residence, Regent College, Vancouver, Canada

The Habit of Hope examines both a deep desire for the communion of family and the way it is too often missing in our lives. These are poems that know how everything can be taken away from us in a moment, and how we somehow manage to continue to live from hope to hope, hope that is both habitual and robed in the habit of faith. Dawn Morrow looks despair squarely in the face and never yields to it. She is our knight in pursuit of the grail, armed only with her droll humor, intelligence, and piercing wit.

Robert Cording, author of Only So Far, Without My Asking, Walking with Ruskin, and other works