Description: This second collection of poems by St. Louis teacher, Allison Cundiff, includes photographs taken by Allison and friends. Poems range from meditations on mothering to traveling to smothering--and photos illustrate her subtle emotional insights.
Brief description: Allison Cundiff is a graduate of Truman State University (BA English Literature) and the University of Missouri (MA in English Literature, MEd in Secondary Education). Her previous publications include a book of poetry, In Short, A Memory of the Other on a Good Day, co-authored with Steven Schreiner, articles in The Pragmatic Buddhist and Feminist Teacher, and poetry in The Chariton Review. She lives in St. Louis.
Review Quotes: Cundiff's poems dissect and analyze the human body like a Grecian urn, every curve and crack and scar evidence of a past that cannot be withheld. The relationships she trains her poet's eye upon, too, prove themselves to be firmly rooted within in time and memory: promises and disappointments, fears and dreams, "little comings back, / little half forgottens." As if she were a heir of Philip Levine, she describes the hardscrabble roads of rural Missouri and the high-polished countertops of New York City without pretense. Cundiff's voice cuts through the veneer of mere perception to the harsh reality of lives lived. "All the things that made me hide so long ago came crashing back," one poem explains dispassionately, and in this vein Otherings offers its readers all these moments from which Cundiff refuses to flinch. - Jeffrey Zuckerman, Music & Literature Magazine. Allison Cundiff's power as a poet lies in the distillation of moments. Words like "Cocoon tucked wet on swollen heartbeat, / swollen fingers, red scream, longest breath. / Thirst and then the bluecream milk," describe the moment of her daughter's birth. She condenses time and space so you can hold them in your mind and mull over the life playing out before you. She delicately but scathingly describes the difficult resolution of an oppressive relationship as, "love can't ever breathe in the cornering way / The way the deer is after she accidentally / steps on a trap meant for smaller game / waiting with watery eyes, adrenaline heart, / for whatever different-smelling animal to come and eat her / in the cold bright / of a southern Missouri day." Cundiff purifies the thoughts and emotions of events until they become the kind of narrative poems you want to carry around in your pocket. - Melissa Singleton, Founder and Host of Goodie House Poetry.