“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!”—Kevin Young, author of The Grey Album, (New York Times Notable Book, 2012)
“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.”—Sherod Santos, author of The Intricated Soul: New and Selected Poems