All That Blue by Allison Field Bell

“You don’t mean /to write poems about bodies (or women)” says the speaker in this edgy collection of taut, chiseled poems, “You just want to write poetry.” But this damaged, determined, fiercely honest speaker can’t seem to write poems about anything else. She’s compelled to make “this heavy thing they call woman” her poems’ subject, along with the desire to “know how to want a body like mine,” the perpetual unease of inhabiting a “body afraid of what it could hold if you let it.” In All That Blue, Allison Field Bell proves again and again, incontrovertibly, that this is very much the stuff of poetry — and exquisite poetry, at that.

–Jacqueline Osherow, author of Divine Ratios

All That Blue cleverly examines the inherent dilemma of trying to exist freely as a woman in a world of gendered roles and violent realities. The varied poems shine as free verse, using intricate form or as prose poetry as well. Allison Field Bell has written a necessary, dynamic debut.

–Jose Hernandez Diaz, author of Bad Mexican, Bad Americanand The Parachutist.

Allison Field Bell‘s All That Blue is a walk through a landscape where memory and desire intertwine like wildflowers and wind. These poems are artifacts of excavation; they unearth the tender roots of childhood dreams, the tangled paths of mental health, and the evolving definitions of womanhood. Through her careful use of imagery—a guppy-filled jar, a longed-for horse, the stark beauty of the Sonoran Desert— Field Bell makes emotion tangible. This collection does not fear shadows but brings light by offering readers an empathetic voice that resonates long after the page is turned.

–CMarie Fuhrman, author of Salmon Weather: Writing from the Land of No Return