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They Sing at Poems by Alison Stone Winner of the 2003 |
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If you're not careful, Alison Stone will devour you. Although she
announces in one poem that love is a room she enters 'sideways,' Stone's
appetite for the physical and spiritual is never selective. It hunts
down all things, sacred and profane. The anaphoric poem "My
Hunger" finishes 'Mangy and mateless, /my
hunger gobbles chocolate, sunsets, 'children, prizes, flame. /my hunger is an
animal without a proper name.' .... The poems
in Alison Stone's They Sing at Midnight risk many "nows." They image and idea, whisper and howl,
implore and grieve. Their versions of the mundane and the mystic engage
us, offer shape and texture to the 'messy bright life we are born for.'
But her poems also deliver the hard fact that 'decay is in the air,'
and, despite any hard-fought faith, we don't get out of here alive. As
such her poetics serve notice of the metaphysical amid the imminent, how
Persephone is always and forever descending and returning, death into life,
and life into death. Such wisdom is Stone's gift to us. Thom Ward, from the forward "Stone slips a carving knife under the skin of convention,
eviscerating appearances, revealing the savage truth...Kill to get one." Hugo Williams |
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To order a signed copy
of They Sing at In the Stone Poetry For international orders, send a check or money order from a
bank with a For
additional information, contact:
stonepoetryinfo@aol.com |
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------- A selected poem from the book: Persephone’s First Season in Hell That winter I learned what the animals know. My hair thickened, blood grew cold and slow, and as the flowers had fallen from my apron, so joy and memory spilled from the sack of my
skin. Now that food was safe, I would not eat. The chewed heart of pomegranate blocked my throat. All I had cherished went on above. Mother’s tears
watered my roof. Armored in loneliness I learned to love no one. The dead scurried about while my heart slept — red seed beneath its tree
of bone. I learned to quicken my husband’s pleasure and to melt memories of
his touch with tears. My marriage lengthened and coiled. Above the black walls of my world, Apollo drifted in his ring of fire. With half his journey done, the ground above me
split. Like a child in the womb I felt the tingle beneath the fingernails that marks the end of
death. |
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------------------------------------------------------------- About the Poet Alison Stone’s poems have appeared in The Paris Review,
Ploughshares, Poetry, and a variety of other magazines and
anthologies. She was awarded the |
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