Alison Luterman Biography
Alison Luterman was raised in New England, but moved to Oakland, California in 1990. Since that time she has worked as an HIV counselor, a drug and alcohol counselor, a drama teacher and a freelance reporter and has taught a number of poetry workshops in schools.
As a writer she is known as a poet, essayist, short story writer and playwright. Her pieces have appeared in the publications Poetry East, Poet Lore, Whetstone, Kalliope, Oberon, The Sun, Kshanti, The Brooklyn Review, Poet Lore and Kalliope.
She describes her poetry as "accessible... with a spiritual focus, grounded in the real world of my daily life". Her first book, The Largest Possible Life won the Cleveland State University Poetry Prize 2000 and was published in 2001.
She also says that: "My strength as a writer comes from my willingness to be naked and vulnerable, and to connect my own small set of concerns to the larger questions and concerns of humanity."
Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
...
I could be the waitress
in the airport restaurant
full of tired cigarette smoke and unseeing tourists.
I could turn into the never-noticed landscape
...
So many so small go on day and night
under your feet you barely notice.
A big bang sounds like someone in the upstairs apartment
knocking over their refrigerator, and you ask,
...
Try to love everything that gets in your way:
the Chinese women in flowered bathing caps
murmuring together in Mandarin, doing leg exercises in your lane
...
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