Poetry. "An oblique conversation with Degas reigns throughout this collection of oddly heartbreaking pieces. Against the backdrop of his paintings and sketches, we find ourselves in an intimate world, coherent but uncanny, where private memory becomes inseparable from the culture we hold in common, and all of it just barely cracked open, riven by interstices through which we glimpse the vivid but unsayable. White has given us a truly exceptional first collection, deeply musical and intricately haunting"--Cole Swensen.

Author Hometown: Irvine, CA USA



About the author: Allison Benis White's poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and Pleiades, among other journals. Her honors include the Indiana Review Poetry Prize, the Bernice Slote Award from Prairie Schooner, and a Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers. She is currently at work on a second poetry manuscript, "Small Porcelain Head," which received the 2008 James D. Phelan Literary Award for a work in progress from the San Francisco Foundation. She teaches at the University of California, Irvine.

Reviews:
http://www.avatarreview.net/AV11/category/reviews/steve-harris-reviews-allison-benis-white
http://therumpus.net/2009/04/scrawl-girl/#more-13219
http://jjgallaher.blogspot.com/2009/02/allison-benis-white-self-portrait-with.html
http://virgininthevolcano.blogspot.com/2009/02/allison-benis-white-self-portrait-with.html
http://victoriamchang.blogspot.com/2009/06/discovery.html
http://www.allisonbeniswhite.com/
http://www.forewordmagazine.com/self-portrait-crayon
http://www.ronslate.com/self_portrait_crayon_prose_poems_allison_benis_white_cleveland_state_university_press
http://bit.ly/GENTLYREAD
http://cutbankpoetry.blogspot.com/2009/09/normal.html
http://bostonreview.net/BR34.6/chang_micro.php