On the Desire to Levitate

Alison Powell received an MFA in Poetry from Indiana University in 2005. Her work has previously appeared in journals including Boston Review, AGNI, Crazyhorse, Black Warrior Review, Puerto del Sol, Antioch Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthology Best New Poets 2006. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.

"By turns tough, talky, triumphant, and tragic, like the Midwest itself, Alison Powell's On the Desire to Levitate lifts us above the lush landscapes of her vision. Hers is an elegiac imagination that, in its very lyric confidence, manages to affirm that flight is never simple—all while making it look effortless. In love with language, folk song, the raw fields, and eminence, these poems sing while conjuring. Presto!" "The great strengths…of the book, are vividness, striking images, a sense of place, and a forthright approach to the normal ambivalence in families' experience of age and death." (Eclectica) "I've always felt that the true test of a poet lies in his/her love poems—whether to nature, god, art, the beloved, it hardly matters—for therein lies the driving force of human experience: to release oneself from the limits of the self, to cross, as one poem puts it, "that bridge of disbelief / between who someone is and might, someday, be." The hungers of sexual experience, the imaginary heavens of childhood, the mythic yearnings of Orpheus and Eurydice—this book abounds with examples. I suppose it goes without saying that the lyric gift required to invoke that world is an uncommon thing for any book of poems; for a first book, it is truly rare. Alison Powell's On the Desire to Levitate marks the beginning of a brilliant career." "In the second line of the title poem, which opens Alison Powell's first col- lection, we encounter the word flight, italicized, set off by itself between a colon and a period as if framed for our notice. It is a useful clue, for the twenty-nine poems gathered here exhibit several kinds of flight." (Middle West Review) "This collection celebrates the humanity and surprise of being a child, being an adult, being fully alive in this strange and perplexing and magnificent world. It's an inclusive story: angels mean something in this book, and are willing to look back at us just as hard as we look at them. Yet it's never grim—corn grows; language brims; lives rise and glow. There's often a delicious humor in this work, and always a deep and lasting integrity."