Overview

A Rare But Possible Condition holds at its center an inescapable question: what happens when you lose everything? The collection opens with the proverbial ""before,"" inviting readers to the altar of the everyday, where children forage summer fruits, the dictionary tells stories, moving boxes are sealed up, and poems are whimsy. When the everyday is reduced to ruins in the wake of coming out, the speaker has to decide what's next. The book makes no resolution, only a resolve to fall into Something Greater.

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Reviews

""In A Rare but Possible Condition, Alison Davis braids capacious curiosity with raw vulnerability. Intimate with Elizabeth Bishop's art of losing and Adrienne Rich's wrecks, Davis writes from the aftermath of disasters of a 'love, which has so many strange / hands and absolutely no sense of decorum whatsoever.' This moving debut is driven by a hungry spirit of inquiry and a reverence that stands ready to kneel before each ordinary river's miracle. Reaching across unknowable distances to a stranger, a brother, a daughter, a friend, a lover, Davis writes with bone-deep knowledge of the flawed and fleeting nature of all our bonds yet still dares to plead 'mispronounce me but say me.'"" -Bronwen Tate ""Alison Davis' A Rare But Possible Condition is a sumptuous celebration of many things: wonder, connection, sacrifice, poetic form, the very meaning of what it is to exist. One of her most apt tools in these poems is the question mark - her mastery of it makes it as though you can actually feel one in your palm. She helps you behold the question mark's smooth edge, its fine point, its lone period, both isolated and in community. And then, she holds it to your eye, and uses it as a lens through which to see our world."" -Phil Kaye

Author Information

Alison Davis is an award-winning educator, scholar, artist, and activist based in Northern California. Alison's work has been featured in a wide range of literary and scholarly publications, including The Sun, Rattle, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, Braided Way, SAUTI: Stanford Journal of African Studies, Research Bulletin, and School Renewal, as well as the chapbook Wild Canvas (Finishing Line Press, 2024). Although she holds multiple advanced degrees from Very Prestigious Universities, she sees her willingness to be like Rumi and gamble everything for love as her greatest credential. A Rare But Possible Condition is her debut collection.

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