"Hilda Downer's poems in Sky Under The Roof affected me deeply. The poems are powerful expressions of hard truths of human life. They are beautiful, sophisticated, brave poems that do not flinch from the challenges of living and of writing. Grounded in details of Appalachian life and land, Hilda Downer's poems are products of a good heart, mature sensibility and developed talent. These poems have moved me and taught me about things I thought I knew but didn't. –Gurney Norman (former Poet Laureate of Kentucky).
Hilda Downer’s splendid new book of poems does just what its title promises. It magically melds the realm of the natural world – its mystery, its unbridled impulse toward the sacred – with the daily offices of domestic life deep in the mountains of Downer’s beloved Appalachia….Sky Under the Roof brings it all back, restored, and rarified in the preternatural light of Downer’s dazzling poetry. –Joseph Bathanti (Poet Laureate of North Carolina)."