Steel

Poetry. Winner of the 2014 Cider Press Review Book Award. Book award judge Jeffrey Harrison says of STEEL: Two tragic events haunt this powerful first collection-the early loss of the poet’s mother and her brother’s death-the kind of events that ‘change the alignment / of every season after’ and tear open vast absences in a life. Alison Prine bravely explores those absences here, engaging in the struggle to make something ‘immune to ruin’ out of what is broken and to mend the connections severed by death, even while acknowledging the inability of language to fill the void left by loved ones or to find easy answers. ‘This isn’t consolation, ’ as she says in one poem. Instead, poem by poem, she makes a dwelling for herself and the reader, ‘building from the inside’ while remaining attuned to the possibility of correspondences in the outside world. And through the quiet urgency of her voice, she finds ‘a secular way of praying.’ This book is a blessing