Informed
ISBN: 978-1630451073
2024, NYQ Books
$18.95, 108 pages, Paper
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Reviewed by Faye Rapoport DesPres
“Words mean more than the dictionary lets on,” (p. 27) Alison Stone writes in her ninth collection, Informed (New York Quarterly Books, 2024). If any writer can back up that statement it’s Stone, whose canny manipulation of contrast and repetition results in a collection of poems informed by classic forms that infuse every line with augmented meaning.
Informed is a follow-up to 2023’s To See What Rises (CW Books), which used free verse to explore themes of youth, family, loss, and the pandemic. In this collection, the poet revisits these themes working with pantoums, ghazals, a jeweled sonnet crown, an acrostic poem, and even Terrance Hayes’ invented anagram form. She flirts with recollection, rebellion, and social commentary without letting the reader forget that she is a modern feminist poet working with forms historically reserved for classic male poets (“What a woman knows, she tells slant./Let men and the sun spill everything.” p. 25). Even the cover image, which Stone envisioned and was rendered by her talented teen, declares a bold and challenging feminism: a goddess is depicted as a creative force working within a formal, hard-lined perspective.
Themes of the modern female psychological, emotional, and sexual experience are woven throughout Informed. The reader encounters the physical and emotional yearnings of youth (“I felt awkward everywhere, my life unspooling like a film” p. 16), the shocking loss of innocence (“Dead lovers are the hardest to forget,” p. 33), and the potential realities of marriage and adulthood (“When did days take on a stain of disappointment?” p. 22). Meanwhile, political and societal questions lead to frank assessments of a troubled modern world, including its religious and violent conflicts. In “Well-Lit” the speaker states:
No protection from bullets in temples
or mosques. Maybe God’s just a metaphor, light
making the bush blaze. (p. 45)
One of the most appealing aspects of reading Informed—as I find true with all of Stone’s work—is the continued sense of discovery experienced by the reader. There are numerous “ah hah” moments as Stone’s line repetitions, dictated especially by the pantoum form, invite ongoing realization. In “Time Pantoum” a teacher admonishes restless children by saying, “Time will pass, will you?” (p. 15) But by the end of the poem, a change in tense and point of view leads to a wildly different, discomfiting interpretation: “Time would pass, and so would we.” (p. 15)
Informed chronicles the experience of the female spirit as it boldly attacks life while refusing to turn away when life throws a few punches in return. In “Yourself” the speaker observes:
Dad’s sex advice—A man won’t buy the cow
If he gets free milk. Don’t give, sell yourself. (p. 37)
Yet in “Rocky Horror Pantoum,” a sense of longing softens the hard edges of painful youth:
Did Paul know I fancied him?
Though dating the boy who played Brad,
I read the love note in Paul’s pocket,
wanted what I couldn’t have. (p. 19)
It’s impossible to know how much of the poetry in Informed originates from Stone’s actual life. At times the poems read almost as memoir, at times as the product of a vivid imagination that lulls the reader with lyricism before revealing hard-hitting truths. In “Mnemonic Pantoum,” the speaker muses on memory before Stone reveals that her purpose is not to soothe but to confront the uncomfortable.
Hospital, pet, concert, third grade crush.
How is it decided which memories last,
which fade like Krazy Kolor from a punk teen’s hair?
I’ll never forget the beagle shot in Daddles. (p. 97)
This razor-sharp honing in on what surprises—or hurts—is the hallmark of Stone’s poetry, whether she’s writing in free verse or making use of classic forms. In this collection, the classic forms rule. Stone masterfully manipulates them to amplify creative contrasts: classic structure used to reveal disarray, ancient myths re-visited to unearth current injustice, and desire only amplified by grief and disappointment. The reader might be tempted to revisit these poems time and again—partly to search for meaning that might have been missed, and partly to appreciate the skill that goes into producing such work.
Whatever the motivation to pore through—and possibly revisit—each page, few readers will finish Informed feeling uninformed—or unaffected.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 4.
Faye Rapoport DesPres is the author of five books, including the memoir-in-essays Message from a Blue Jay, the microfiction collection Soul to Soul: Tiny Stories of Hope and Resilience, and the Stray Cat Stories children’s book series. She is also co-editor of the anthology The Art of Touch: A Collection of Prose and Poetry from the Pandemic and Beyond. Faye’s creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, interviews, and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of literary journals. A 10th anniversary edition of Message from a Blue Jay and a new chapbook titled The Varmint and Other Stories: Four Short Fictions are forthcoming from Huntsville Independent Press in December 2024.
Alison Stone has published five poetry collections, including Ordinary Magic, (NYQ Books, 2016), Dangerous Enough (Presa Press 2014), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Poet Lore, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin award. She is also a painter and the creator of The Stone Tarot. A licensed psychotherapist, she has private practices in NYC and Nyack. She is currently editing an anthology of poems on the Persephone/Demeter myth.
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