Alison Stone, Poet
Alison Stone's Home Page
Poetry Books by Alison Stone
*To See What Rises (CW Books, 2023)
* ZOMBIES at the Disco (Jacar Press, 2020)
* Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2019)
*
Masterplan (co-authored with Eric Greinke, Presa Press, 2018)
*
Dazzle (Jacar Press, 2017)
*
Ordinary Magic (NYQ Books, 2016)
*
Dangerous Enough (Presa Press, 2014)
*
Borrowed Logic (chapbook from Dancing Girl Press, 2014)
*
From the Fool to the World (Para950llel Press, 2012)
*
They Sing at Midnight (Many Mountains
Moving Press, 2003)
To See What Rises
A poem from the book:
Diana Explains about Actaeon
It wasn’t modesty, I’m gorgeous,
although aeons older than the stars
you discard at first sag. A goddess
has no expiration date. And no,
I won’t titillate you with descriptions
of my eyes or muscle tone. There’s
far too much of that in poems.
No boy can reduce me
to a worn-out trope – woman exposed
or shining in the light
of the male gaze.
He needed to learn
how an object feels
I cast my spell.
I called the dogs.
To order a signed copy in the US, either use PayPal (Nygoddess3aolcom) or send a check
made out to 'Stone' for $19.00 plus $3.92 postage & handling to: Stone, 114 School Street, Nyack, NY 10960
ZOMBIES at the Disco
Jacar Press, 2020
Alison Stone brings us contemporary ghazals that maintain the integrity of the
original form while expanding the subject matter to include everything from
pets to politics. Often funny, sometimes achingly sad, these poems
take advantage of the leaps this forms allows, taking the reader on a
high-speed, satisfying journey through both the internal and
external worlds.
from Adult Ghazal
We read each
other by the light of sex.
Scarves,
collars, make-up hide a bite fom sex.
Elvis was
only shown from the waist up.
Censors
feared his hips would incite sex.
To order a signed copy in the US, either use PayPal (Nygoddess3aolcom) or send a check
made out to 'Stone' for $16.00 plus $3.92 postage & handling to: Stone, 114 School Street, Nyack, NY 10960
Caught in the Myth
NYQ Books, 2019
Alison Stone's sixth collection deals with the
myths, both classic and contemporary, that shape our psyches and our world.
From Caligula and Medusa to Gabby Douglas and Ivanka Trump, these speakers
illuminate the timeless struggles for power and love that play a central role
in literature and art. Stone's speakers tell their stories in poems that both
transcend culture and time and illuminate this particular historical moment.
To order a signed copy in the US, either use PayPal (Nygoddess3aolcom) or send a check
made out to 'Stone' for $15.95 plus $3.92 postage & handling to: Stone, 114 School Street, Nyack, NY 10960
Masterplan
Presa Press, 2017
Widely published poets Alison
Stone and Eric Greinke wrote these inventive poems together from February, 2014
to April, 2017.
Although they each wrote
an equal number of lines in each poem, they used a variety of patterns, ranging
from simple, every-other-line patterns to more complex forms wherein they
alternated beginnings, middles, endings and titles.
The tone of these poems is varied too,
ranging from ironic and humorous to philosophical and elegiac, from narrative
to lyric.
The voices of Alison and Eric
blend seamlessly into a bold third persona, a gender-neutral and ageless punk
poet who can both whisper and shout.
To order a signed copy in the US, either use PayPal (Nygoddess3aolcom) or send a check
made out to 'Stone' for $13.95 plus $3.92 postage & handling to: Stone, 114 School Street, Nyack, NY 10960
Dazzle
Jacar Press, 2017
“With
a jeweler’s lapidary skill, Alison Stone has fashioned a string of gemlike poems that indeed (dare I say it?) dazzle—with wisdom, wit, and brio. She’s crafted every line to a high polish, rich in metaphor and music. Wide-ranging in subjects—so much to catch they
eye—this book brims with “the shimmer, the shiver, the quicksilver / flickers. The
sparkle, the dazzle of poetry. Readers,
enjoy!”— Richard Foerster
Link to review of Dazzle
To order a signed copy in the US, either use PayPal (Nygoddess3aolcom) or send a check made out to 'Stone'
for $16.00 plus $3.92 postage & handling to: Stone, 114
School Street, Nyack, NY 10960
Ordinary Magic
NYQ Books, 2016
Award-wining poet Alison Stone draws
from her tarot in the latest collection. These 78 poems range from the
archetypal (The Fool, The Magician, etc.) to the everyday situations of love, work,
ideas, and conflicts that make up our lives.
Mythical
figures from past and present appear—Prometheus and Persephone represent court
cards, as do Lou Reed and Steve Jobs. By turns witty and heartbreaking, this book goes down easily enough to be
devoured in one sitting yet revimage006.jpgeals greater depths
with each subsequent reading. Stone’s accessible lyrics move and entertain us with the struggles and joys of what
it means to be human.
“Ordinary
Magic”, Alison stone’s wonderfully titled book of Tarot-themed poetry,
returns the deck to its creative roots, for the cards were used to inspire
poetry long before they were drafted as a tool for fortune-telling. Her cards
on the Major Arcana, the 22 trump cards, follow closely the themes and imagery
of the well-known Rider deck, while zeroing in on original details that make
these symbolic pictures both personal and fresh. But it's in the fifty-six suit
cards, the so-called Minor Arcana, that Stone really shines. Largely abandoning
the "official" imagery of the scenes (which are, in fact, only 100
years old), Stone allows the cards to suggest ideas, memories, and personal
stories for poems that are immediate and alive."—Rachel
Pollock
To order a signed copy in the US, either use PayPal (Nygoddess3aolcom) or send a check made out to
'Stone' for $14.95 plus $3.92 postage & handling to: Stone, 114 School Street, Nyack, NY 10960
Dangerous Enough
Presa Press 2014
“Stone is not a ‘literary’ poet (there
are enough of them). Her text does not depend on other texts. She is interested
in a woman’s truth, and has something hard won (but won) to give her readers.
This is strong poetry.”
—Allen Grossman
“Gorgeous work – not only accessible,
but tight as can be. I must say that Alison Stone’s book is the first one
I've read cover to cover within the first day of reception. Remarkable
work"
—David Cope
“Stone understands that poems, as
Robert Lowell encouraged, must be events in themselves and not merely records
of events. Whether psychological or philosophical, or advancing the intensity
of raw emotion, Stone’s poems are urgent and dramatic, put themselves and by
extension the reader, at risk."
—Thom Ward
“Stone offers lean and sparkling poetry that invites us
to join with it - poems that are, in their way, multi-faceted spaces to
explore, discovering what we may, and grafting what we bring.”
—Verse Wisconsin
Alison reading poems
from Dangerous Enough on YouTube
Pedestal
Magazine review of Dangerous Enough
Self-Interview about
this book at the end of this web page.
To order a signed copy in the
US. either use PayPal (Nygoddess3aolcom) or send a check made out to
'Stone' for $15.95 plus $3.92 postage & handling to: Stone, 114 School Street, Nyack, NY 10960
They Sing at Midnight
Winner of the 2003 Many Mountains
Moving Poetry Award
“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
Yes
Love
is a room I enter sideways.
Roots
of gut, branches of bone,
our
bodies burn like trees.
Our
faces have left us.
Whatever
ties us to our name has vanished
in
the owl’s beak.
Boneless,
we are maggots feeding
underneath
the rock of the dark.
Our mouth opens to coral and stars.
To order a signed copy of They Sing
at Midnight in the US, either use PayPal (Nygoddess3aolcom) or send a check made out to 'Stone' for $12.95 plus $3.92 postage & handling to: Stone, 114 School Street, Nyack, NY 10960
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Borrowed Logic
Dancing Girl Press 2014
Pomegrante
Mother warned, Sex
is a trap.
Still, every teenager wants more
Than flowers, more than stale, virginal green.
His lips, cool moss against my nape.
I traded sunlight for a romp
In the forbidden, a devoted mate.
My meadow-scent’s exotic here, so he’s
eager
to please, writes me poems by the meager
glow of dying fireflies. If he’d only
kick that mange-
infested dog out of our bed. Such horrid pant-
ing! Each tongue licks my face like
meat.
To order in the US, either use PayPal (Nygoddess3aolcom) or send a check made out to 'Stone' for
$7.00 plus $3.92 postage & handling to:Stone, 114 School
Street, Nyack, NY
10960
About the Poet
Alison
Stone’s poems have appeared in The Paris
Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Poetry International, Chelsea, Barrow Street, and
a variety of other journals and anthologies.
She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick
Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s
Madeline Sadin award.
Ms. Stone is also a visual
artist who spent nine years producing oil painting of the 78 images of the
tarot. The Stone Tarot is available in
stores and on the internet. (stonetarot.com). Ms. Stone has exhibited her paintings in a
variety of galleries, museums, and other venues in London, MA, RI, and NY.
She is a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City and Nyack, NY.
What is the title of your book? Dangerous Enough
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? Among other issues, Dangerous Enough explores rites of passage --
adolescence, marriage, childbirth, the death of a parent.
What genre does the book fall under? Poetry
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the book? I
worked on the poems in this collection over a period of about twenty years.
Some of these are poems that, for whatever reason, were left out of They Sing
at Midnight.
What surprised you about people's reactions to the book? Everyone who tells me they have a favorite poem chooses a different
one.
What else do you want to tell us about the writing of this book? As I worked on the arc for this book I was surprised at how well they
fit together, many having been written so many years apart. The body, and time,
connect them so they flow.
Who published Dangerous Enough?
Presa Press. www.presapress.com I am delighted to be among their authors.
——————————————————————
Kathi Aguero tagged me for this interview. Her wonderful collection
After That was recently published by Tiger Bark Press. www.tigerbarkpress.com
I tagged Maxine Silverman, whose powerful chapbook The Transport of the Aim
addresses the relationship
between Emily Dickinson and Celia Thaxter (www.parallelpress.com) and
Joseph Milford, whose Cracked Altimeter is a rich journey through language,
ideas, and emotion.
Site last updated July 2023