What do you think?
Rate this book
Accidental Devotions
Witty, humorous, and oh so tender, Accidental Devotions reminds us that in the end, life is a brief devotion of moments--beautiful, accidental, and always--gone too soon.
Kelli Russell Agodon's latest collection, Accidental Devotions, seeks to find meaning in a world lit by screens and haunted by ghosts--both real and digital. Blending humor with vulnerability, these poems embrace the beautiful chaos of our relationships, of aging and being human. Here, explorations of desire, technology, and spirituality ring out like birdsong through a chapel. Sharp and playful, Accidental Devotions is for the quiet rebels and devoted readers--for those who carry ashes to the beach, ask Alexa for guidance, keep Emily Dickinson's book on the nightstand, or fall in love mid-sentence. With queer tenderness, and an ongoing devotion to desire, these poems make room for grief and joy, pleasure and struggle. The result: a dazzling, defiant field guide to staying human.
__________________
Accidental Devotions is serious and delicious. Just what we need in these challenging times. ~ Ellen Bass
I am a devotee of each of these erotic, botanical, angelic lines, each one pressed and saved like any beauty you wish to hold forever. Read these poems. Let everything in. ~ Traci Brimhall
This is a brave book, one that shows us there is nothing accidental about Kelli Russell Agodon’s devotions—but as we turn the pages, our own devotions might, perhaps, deepen. Bravo! ~ Ilya Kaminsky
Kelli Russell Agodon's latest collection, Accidental Devotions, seeks to find meaning in a world lit by screens and haunted by ghosts--both real and digital. Blending humor with vulnerability, these poems embrace the beautiful chaos of our relationships, of aging and being human. Here, explorations of desire, technology, and spirituality ring out like birdsong through a chapel. Sharp and playful, Accidental Devotions is for the quiet rebels and devoted readers--for those who carry ashes to the beach, ask Alexa for guidance, keep Emily Dickinson's book on the nightstand, or fall in love mid-sentence. With queer tenderness, and an ongoing devotion to desire, these poems make room for grief and joy, pleasure and struggle. The result: a dazzling, defiant field guide to staying human.
__________________
Accidental Devotions is serious and delicious. Just what we need in these challenging times. ~ Ellen Bass
I am a devotee of each of these erotic, botanical, angelic lines, each one pressed and saved like any beauty you wish to hold forever. Read these poems. Let everything in. ~ Traci Brimhall
This is a brave book, one that shows us there is nothing accidental about Kelli Russell Agodon’s devotions—but as we turn the pages, our own devotions might, perhaps, deepen. Bravo! ~ Ilya Kaminsky
- GenresPoetry
79 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 12, 2026
About the author
Kelli Russell Agodon
17 books187 followersKelli Russell Agodon is a prize-winning poet, writer, and editor from the Northwest.
Kelli Russell Agodon’s newest book is Dialogues with Rising Tides from Copper Canyon Press. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press as well as the Co-Director of Poets on the Coast: A Weekend Retreat for Women. Her last book, Hourglass Museum, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards and shortlisted for the Julie Suk Poetry Prize. She is the author of Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room (White Pine Press, 2010), Winner of the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Prize in Poetry, and a Finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She is also the author of Small Knots (2004) and the chapbook, Geography (2003). She co-edited the first eBook anthology of contemporary women’s poetry, Fire On Her Tongue, and recently published The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice, a book of poetry writing exercises she coauthored with Martha Silano.
She’s received awards from the Poetry Society of America, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation, James Hearst Poetry Prize, Artist Trust, and the Puffin Foundation. Agodon lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State on traditional land of the Chimacum, Coast Salish, S'Klallam, and Suquamish people where she is an avid paddleboarder and hiker. She serves on the poetry faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.
She writes about living and writing creatively on her blog, Book of Kells at: www.ofkells.blogspot.com
Visit her at www.agodon.com or on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/agodon
Twitter: @kelliagodon
Instagram: @kelliagodon
Or write to her directly at: kelli (at) agodon.com
For more information on Kelli, please visit: www.agodon.com
Kelli Russell Agodon’s newest book is Dialogues with Rising Tides from Copper Canyon Press. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press as well as the Co-Director of Poets on the Coast: A Weekend Retreat for Women. Her last book, Hourglass Museum, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards and shortlisted for the Julie Suk Poetry Prize. She is the author of Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room (White Pine Press, 2010), Winner of the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Prize in Poetry, and a Finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She is also the author of Small Knots (2004) and the chapbook, Geography (2003). She co-edited the first eBook anthology of contemporary women’s poetry, Fire On Her Tongue, and recently published The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice, a book of poetry writing exercises she coauthored with Martha Silano.
She’s received awards from the Poetry Society of America, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation, James Hearst Poetry Prize, Artist Trust, and the Puffin Foundation. Agodon lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State on traditional land of the Chimacum, Coast Salish, S'Klallam, and Suquamish people where she is an avid paddleboarder and hiker. She serves on the poetry faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.
She writes about living and writing creatively on her blog, Book of Kells at: www.ofkells.blogspot.com
Visit her at www.agodon.com or on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/agodon
Twitter: @kelliagodon
Instagram: @kelliagodon
Or write to her directly at: kelli (at) agodon.com
For more information on Kelli, please visit: www.agodon.com
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
June 21, 2026
Loved it! Funny, wise, and beautifully crafted.
June 27, 2026
Accidental Devotion –
Written by Kelli Russell Agodon
Published by Copper Canyon Press – 2026 79 pages
In her most recent foray into the literary cosmos, Kelli Russell Agodon indulgences us with a shimmer of grace and a bit of poet rebellion. Accidental Devotions is by no means an accident. Kelli once again has written herself a winner of a book.
She encountered the occult, courted angelic spirits, and enlisted the poetic prowess Emily Dickinson as she gave is both wit and sober look into her world, where she beautifully expressed a plurality of love. This book feels like these are poems that have been itching to break free and enter the world.
Kelli acknowledges the chaotic times in which we live and seems to be saying in all the cosmos, I am understanding more than I ever have. She is embracing herself and her age with what she has grown into, and she opens about queerness. “Make space for the unknown, I want to cherish what arrives without fearing.”
She embraces love and preaches it from her pulpit on pages. “We’re hanging in there, knowing love is love is love and also temporary, like us.” “Looking back,” she says, “It’s easy to understand how I was exhausted with every pathway, how each exit was also a possibility. “Everyone is easy to love, I told him, I told her, I told them.”
She laments, “It’s sad but no sad how our wrists are made of poetry, and when we touch the underside of life, we feel the pulse, hear Rilke’s ancient tower of words holding us.”
There is tenderness, there is desire among these lines. There is a sensual side of these poem, and Kelli make’s no apology for her messages.
I believe Kelli is spot on when she says, “We are messy saints—drawn to light, yet fluent in dusk.” And again, when she says, “melancholy is a hunger I can’t feed.
Be careful reading, “The last wildfire was sparked by a discarded sonnet—
unrhymed and reckless.”
Written by Kelli Russell Agodon
Published by Copper Canyon Press – 2026 79 pages
In her most recent foray into the literary cosmos, Kelli Russell Agodon indulgences us with a shimmer of grace and a bit of poet rebellion. Accidental Devotions is by no means an accident. Kelli once again has written herself a winner of a book.
She encountered the occult, courted angelic spirits, and enlisted the poetic prowess Emily Dickinson as she gave is both wit and sober look into her world, where she beautifully expressed a plurality of love. This book feels like these are poems that have been itching to break free and enter the world.
Kelli acknowledges the chaotic times in which we live and seems to be saying in all the cosmos, I am understanding more than I ever have. She is embracing herself and her age with what she has grown into, and she opens about queerness. “Make space for the unknown, I want to cherish what arrives without fearing.”
She embraces love and preaches it from her pulpit on pages. “We’re hanging in there, knowing love is love is love and also temporary, like us.” “Looking back,” she says, “It’s easy to understand how I was exhausted with every pathway, how each exit was also a possibility. “Everyone is easy to love, I told him, I told her, I told them.”
She laments, “It’s sad but no sad how our wrists are made of poetry, and when we touch the underside of life, we feel the pulse, hear Rilke’s ancient tower of words holding us.”
There is tenderness, there is desire among these lines. There is a sensual side of these poem, and Kelli make’s no apology for her messages.
I believe Kelli is spot on when she says, “We are messy saints—drawn to light, yet fluent in dusk.” And again, when she says, “melancholy is a hunger I can’t feed.
Be careful reading, “The last wildfire was sparked by a discarded sonnet—
unrhymed and reckless.”
May 24, 2026
Kelli Russell Agodon, in Accidental Devotions, addresses in lush, and often gorgeously surreal, language what it means to be human in relationship with the natural and digital worlds, and in community other human beings. The speaker in this, Agodon’s fifth collection of poetry, speaks to the complexities of love and desire, queerness, death, and the afterlife. Emily Dickinson visits often, offering advice, whimsy, and text messages: “Hey Kel, it’s Em. You know we’re all right, / right? … Hey Kel, / call me…” The speaker observes: “When no one was looking, you tucked twenty dollars / into the hand of a stranger … and there was fluttering … a guardian angel with her hand on your hip.” Alexa and typos, God, gratitude, and the blues all find their way through Agodon’s exquisite lines. Her’s is a collection to savor, surrounded by the scent of jasmine, and the brush of feathers. When she tells us, “(h)old on / fiercely, little love—every road is divine,” believe her, and dive in.
June 15, 2026
A poet may accidentally come upon a devotion because she is paying deepest attention to her world. As if she has extra sensors the rest of us humans do not, Kelli Russell Agodon delivers her sprarkling, magic-feeling poetry in so many conditionals and possibilities and asides and unexpected linkages that reading this collection filled me up. A beauty.
August 21, 2026
As I finished Accidental Devotions, I reflected on about the word devotions—these poems are simultaneously like devotionals, or prayers, and like meditations on our personal devotions (that which we are devoted to), which, often, are our obsessions. The writing is sharp, witty, often dreamlike, about desire, identity, and human relationships, and also about nature, about poetry. And these poems firmly live in a digital, technology-mediated time, which has altered—sometimes in playful ways, other times in more ways more disturbing—where and how we devote our attention and time.
August 12, 2026
Accidental Devotions is the sexiest poetry book I’ve ever read. If sexy poetry seems like an oxymoron, see the image of “her leg/ over my hip bone” and the account of post-marital romp that “feels like it did before you signed a contract” and this fantasy of cosmic seduction: “I want/ to get drunk and wrap my legs around/ the universe as if it had a waist/ and kiss a blazing star.” These are bisexual poems, and by this I do not mean that all the poems are about bisexuality. I mean that they are tone-fluid, communing between pathos and humor, pain and playfulness. These poems put “the holy in melancholy.” They don’t fit easily into neat little categories any more than the speaker who squeezes herself “into a box of what America calls normal.” I use “speaker” loosely because many of the poems are written in second person, with the “you” representing both speaker and reader, blurring yet another boundary in “the brilliance/ of being multitudes.” IMO, there’s nothing sexier than a sense of humor, so it tracks that I found myself laughing out loud every few pages. Examples: “Show me where it hurts should be a T-shirt/ we wear into midlife,” “My Arrhythmia Makes Me Believe I’m Always in Love,” “Poem After Realizing This Is the First Time in Years I Haven’t Failed My Doctor’s Mental Health Test,” and the epigraph from “Young Sirens”: “Twitter: If you had a mermaid phase as a kid you’re probably bisexual now.” In one my favorites, “Alexa, Why Am I Falling Apart?”, Agodon fuses mental health and modern technology in a hilarious yet heartbreaking interaction with a digital assistant, prompting responses like this from Alexa: “I’m sorry, I don’t know ‘Why Am I Falling Apart,’ but/ I do have ‘Everybody Hurts’ by R.E.M. on Prime Music,” “You do not have ‘Why Am I Falling Apart’/ on your shopping list. Do you want me to add that for you?” and “Did you want me to order glue, duct tape, zip ties, or a broom?” The opening line of “Try This” is “Imagine there is no wrong way to love.” We can replace love with write, read, think, be. Imagine there is no wrong way to be. In poem after poem—devotion after devotion—, Agodon does just this, exploring “how vast we are.” Musing on black widow spiders, she likens the poem to “a ransom note/ to an old self.” Accidental Devotions is a love letter to a future self—a manifesto for living lustfully. It will leave you hot but not the least bit bothered.
August 21, 2026
Miracles exist and so—-
do toothpaste and text messages
are lines from Kelli Russell Agodon‘s fifth poetry collection, Accidental Devotions. No one writing poetry today moves as deftly or as intimately from the mundane to the miraculous and back with the wit, empathy and deep musing that Agodon does. These are poems for the “quiet rebels,” for those of us mired in the technological age who can poke fun at our own vulnerabilities…”Alexa, why am I falling apart?”
They are poems of wild flight, enchantment and surprising turns. Joy, grief, the dead, love and the holy all intertwine in these inventive energetic poems which respond to the work of various artists and writers, most notably poets Emily Dickinson, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Conversant and questioning and profound, Agodon’s poetry crossects the narrative with the lyrical in luminous ways. Her Wrightian titles are almost poems in themselves. There is a generosity of spirit here and a celebration of what is most human, a hope to carry us forward and the genuine “warmth of me trying to reach you;” a poetry both of embrace and necessity, a poetry to be re-savored again and again.
do toothpaste and text messages
are lines from Kelli Russell Agodon‘s fifth poetry collection, Accidental Devotions. No one writing poetry today moves as deftly or as intimately from the mundane to the miraculous and back with the wit, empathy and deep musing that Agodon does. These are poems for the “quiet rebels,” for those of us mired in the technological age who can poke fun at our own vulnerabilities…”Alexa, why am I falling apart?”
They are poems of wild flight, enchantment and surprising turns. Joy, grief, the dead, love and the holy all intertwine in these inventive energetic poems which respond to the work of various artists and writers, most notably poets Emily Dickinson, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Conversant and questioning and profound, Agodon’s poetry crossects the narrative with the lyrical in luminous ways. Her Wrightian titles are almost poems in themselves. There is a generosity of spirit here and a celebration of what is most human, a hope to carry us forward and the genuine “warmth of me trying to reach you;” a poetry both of embrace and necessity, a poetry to be re-savored again and again.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
A collection of poems about love, loss, aging, sexuality, grief, and hope.
from In One Calendar Day, We Live a Thousand Lives: "But I'll keep reaching / for what is dying because temporary is more than // an adjective and I need to embrace what I can, / short-lived, momentary, while everything falls apart."
from Accidental Devotions to Poets with Smoldering Wings: "We calculate ghosts by stanza. As good witches, / we court disaster, mistake ourselves / for moths drawn to every blaze. // As rebel angels, we wear our halos / as tube tops, nose rings. Make no apologies / for our flame. And when our skin / scorches paper, we revises ourselves // as poems."
from Everything Is Equal When You're Distorted by the Afterlife: "We are old and everything is / sacred—the fireweed is thigh high and a friend is // dying. Or the sunflowers are. All things echo with loss. / Everything is equal when you're devoted // to the afterlife."
from In One Calendar Day, We Live a Thousand Lives: "But I'll keep reaching / for what is dying because temporary is more than // an adjective and I need to embrace what I can, / short-lived, momentary, while everything falls apart."
from Accidental Devotions to Poets with Smoldering Wings: "We calculate ghosts by stanza. As good witches, / we court disaster, mistake ourselves / for moths drawn to every blaze. // As rebel angels, we wear our halos / as tube tops, nose rings. Make no apologies / for our flame. And when our skin / scorches paper, we revises ourselves // as poems."
from Everything Is Equal When You're Distorted by the Afterlife: "We are old and everything is / sacred—the fireweed is thigh high and a friend is // dying. Or the sunflowers are. All things echo with loss. / Everything is equal when you're devoted // to the afterlife."
May 15, 2026
Both digital and Dickinsonian, the poems in ACCIDENTAL DEVOTIONS contemplate spirituality and the technology shaping our lives. Often the intersection evokes humor as in "Accidental Devotion to a Smart Phone" where we overhear a man's dialogue into his phone—an apology to a loved one. The speaker wants the man to toss his phone into the ocean and select a seashell for the partner he's trying to win back. Electronics have a deistic presence in "Alexa Why Am I Falling Apart", "Some Days You Wonder if God Has Left the Group Chat" and "Accidental Devotion in Which My Search History Becomes a Prayer". These are the absurd moments of our era that benefit from fresh eyes, luckily Kelli Russell Agodon lends us hers. You cannot read these poems without wanting to see the world anew—and yes, to attempt to write about it with as much wit and elegance.
June 13, 2026
What I found most compelling in this collection is the level of astonishment I experienced moving through the gamut of emotions and experiences in the poet's work. Inside the light hearted lens of the world comes deepest meaning such as the poem Why Not Shorten Our Lives with Splendor? How splendor isn't just defined by a moment's grace, but the shift in the kalediscope and the sharp turn to the unexpected. There's a line in this poem which I won't share because I don't want to include spoilers but that single line change my own perspective on the poem, the poet and myself and brought my day into a way I want to think going forward. This is a single poem of the many which will do more than you could ever imagine a collection might by a poet who sees us from the trapeeze of the soul and never stops swinging.
September 8, 2026
"Alexa, Why Am I Falling Apart? and Other Amazing Titles"
Accidental Devotions is a devotional not only on how to live honestly in these crazy times, it's also a primer for how to write stellar poems, if you pay the right kind of attention to this immensely readable collection. For example, Agodon is a master of the title that makes you have to keep reading: "Somedays You Wonder If God Has Left the Group Chat," and "Why Not Shorten Our Lives with Splendor" are two of my favorites among many favorites. There are also two book making elements I've not seen in any other contemporary paperback. Reader, you need to buy your own copy and go to the back of the book to find what I am talking about. Meanwhile, let me entice you with these lines: "Imagine there is no wrong way to love." This is a book you will not lend to even your best friend, but you can buy her her own copy.
Accidental Devotions is a devotional not only on how to live honestly in these crazy times, it's also a primer for how to write stellar poems, if you pay the right kind of attention to this immensely readable collection. For example, Agodon is a master of the title that makes you have to keep reading: "Somedays You Wonder If God Has Left the Group Chat," and "Why Not Shorten Our Lives with Splendor" are two of my favorites among many favorites. There are also two book making elements I've not seen in any other contemporary paperback. Reader, you need to buy your own copy and go to the back of the book to find what I am talking about. Meanwhile, let me entice you with these lines: "Imagine there is no wrong way to love." This is a book you will not lend to even your best friend, but you can buy her her own copy.
July 27, 2026
It’s easy to love Kelli Russell Agodon’s latest collection. How can one not find sustenance in lines like these in the poem, “Unfinished Angels:” “Maybe she sees what we are // —miracles and molecules, faithful and fallen, / blessed and broken—we are small gods / glimmering in the dark, doing the best we can.” Readers will take delight in titles, such as “Some Days You Wonder if God Has Left the Group Chat” and “Why Not Shorten Our Lives with Splendor.” I particularly enjoyed that this collection is sprinkled with spirituality and social media references, both in all seriousness and all tongue-in-cheek.
Read
September 7, 2026I don’t know where I heard about Kelli Russell Agodon’s 𝘈𝘤𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘋𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴. I am so hesitant to read poetry that I would have given weight to its recommendation. Maybe I picked it up because the words on the back say, “...seeks to find meaning in a world lit by screens.”
I didn’t love it, though. (I DID love the cover!)
My two favorite poems in the collection, though sad, were “Before I Walk Out the Door, I Grab My Switchblade” and “Thirty-One Perfect of US Adults Say They Are ‘Almost Constantly’ Online While Sixty-One Percent of Americans Report Significant Feelings of Loneliness.”
No rating.
I didn’t love it, though. (I DID love the cover!)
My two favorite poems in the collection, though sad, were “Before I Walk Out the Door, I Grab My Switchblade” and “Thirty-One Perfect of US Adults Say They Are ‘Almost Constantly’ Online While Sixty-One Percent of Americans Report Significant Feelings of Loneliness.”
No rating.
August 8, 2026
Some of the best poem titles I’ve ever read in a collection! If only the poems all lived up to the expectations set. Often, the poem texts dissolve into lyricism that’s hard to follow or remember. Even so, I liked several poems here, especially the pop culture references and meditations made. I also like the “project” poems of the book, and the concept of the “accidental devotion,” the idea that you only later realize what you’ve been worshipping or paying attention to.
May 14, 2026
What a wholly original and wonderful collection of poetry! I highly recommend this poet and this book. At times tender but also perceptive, Kelli Russell Agodon touches on the issues of our times with intelligence and wit.
May 16, 2026
This book is full of charming, hopeful and funny meditations on such things as AI, young love, the state of the world. It's a thoughtful book that feels exactly right for our current time.
May 25, 2026
Highly recommend this brave work! Nobody plays with language quite like this master poet!
July 16, 2026
Raced through this in two days. Simply a joy to have a seat as she chronicles the perturbations of her life.
August 29, 2026
Kelli Agodon is my favorite contemporary poet. Her language is so fresh and original and alive, full of surprises. Her work is vulnerable, brave, and generous. Reading or hearing her poetry makes me feel more awake, more attuned to the world around me, more aware of my own interior life with all its subtleties and contradictions. Her work helps me be more open to awe and wonder and more able to carry pain. And she is funny and witty, too.
Just check out these titles from this newest collection: "When You are a Ghost, I Will Love Your Shadow," "Poem After Realizing This is the First Time in Years I Haven't Failed My Doctor's Mental Health Test," "Ask Your Mystic Whether Poetry is Right For You," "Accidental Devotion in Which My Search History Becomes a Prayer."
I have delayed writing this review because I wanted to wait until I finished reading the book - but I keep reading it over and over and don't think I'll stop anytime soon. So I'll just say this book is like hanging out with that friend who makes you see the world in new ways - and also holds your difficult secrets with compassion.
Just check out these titles from this newest collection: "When You are a Ghost, I Will Love Your Shadow," "Poem After Realizing This is the First Time in Years I Haven't Failed My Doctor's Mental Health Test," "Ask Your Mystic Whether Poetry is Right For You," "Accidental Devotion in Which My Search History Becomes a Prayer."
I have delayed writing this review because I wanted to wait until I finished reading the book - but I keep reading it over and over and don't think I'll stop anytime soon. So I'll just say this book is like hanging out with that friend who makes you see the world in new ways - and also holds your difficult secrets with compassion.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews