Advance Praise for ACID RAIN EPITHALAMIUMMight a divorce, like a wedding, require ceremony, witnesses, vows taken? The poems of Acid Rain Epithalamium become songs for the dissolving of an important bond out of which the speaker reemerges forever changed, fragmented into a choir of selves. One self explores pleasure inside her queerness; another one seeks a starker and more sustaining relationship with the divine; another traces the precious and precarious interconnections between the self and other living beings: plant, animal, and mineral.

Watch how the poet unravels the wedding dress to thread a vivid fabric using the warp and weft of the poem. With a “word turned hurricane” the reader witnesses a new vow taken with the ancient art.

- Carolina Ebeid, author of You Ask Me to Talk about the InteriorAcid Rain Epithalamium is a rich, layered text that showcases a range of formal and thematic work. Within the poems are reversals, questionings, tentativeness as the speaker grieves losses—but there’s a strength of voice underneath those hesitancies that is explosive, espouses commitment to an unmapped future, and is ready to be set free.

- Khadijah Queen, author of AnodyneWith this exquisite debut collection from Becca Downs, we join the poet as shenavigates divorce, climate change, and the many parallels in these transformations, asin the title piece:this isn’t the rain we asked forbut it is the rain we’ve madelove to dropped to oneknee bound ourselves for lifethis could be a celebrationwindborn praise songscrawling toward mountaintopsMarked with gorgeous explorations in form, the poet uses the page as her canvas toexamine the before and the after, and to stare deeply down the middle. Throughout thecollection, Downs’ voice emerges with strength, tenderness, rich with emotionalgravitas.

Her deft, delicate hand and elegant poems are powerful, wrestling withcompelling narratives around inherited beliefs and choices while creating a new pathforward to a life and a world that is worthy of poignant and exacting poetry. - Suzi Q.

Smith, author of Gospel of Bones. .