[Crwt-undergrad-info] UCR MFA Alumni Fwd: "Description of Symptoms" by Allison Benis White

[Allison Hedge Coke]

Great poem!

On Wednesday, March 22, 2023, Carlina Perna <cpern002 at ucr.edu> wrote:

> Congrats, Allison!!!
>
> On Mon, Mar 20, 2023 at 8:31 PM Roda Avelar <ravel007 at ucr.edu> wrote:
>
>> Congrats Allison! This is so great!!! 💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 20, 2023 at 8:27 PM Alejandra Castillo Chavez <
>> acast241 at ucr.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> So good! Thank you for sharing! Congratulations to professor Allison
>>> Benis White.
>>>
>>> -Ale
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 20, 2023 at 6:08 PM Allison Hedge Coke <allisonh at ucr.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> "Description of Symptoms" by Allison Benis White Poem-a-Day | Poets.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Now my hands buried / in my hair, resting on piano keys
>>>> [image: Facebook]
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=4752ac027c&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>> [image: Twitter]
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=dab969694f&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>> [image: Instagram]
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=208972237a&e=9de57db1a5>
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>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=b82f94ba62&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>> March 20, 2023
>>>> Description of Symptoms
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=efcbb59356&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>> *Allison Benis White*
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=271186dff0&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>>
>>>> Now my hands buried
>>>> in my hair, resting on piano keys
>>>> in the back of my head.
>>>> This is the music I am playing
>>>> through my mind: a dark room singing
>>>> a song that will not have children.
>>>>
>>>> *
>>>>
>>>> Lying on the floor tonight, snowflakes
>>>> cut from paper laid over my eyes, a hand
>>>> carved from wood laid over my mouth.
>>>> If the truth is the thing you must not say,
>>>> I will speak for the vase now
>>>> as it falls: it is better never
>>>> to be at all.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *
>>>>
>>>> A hand on the back of my head
>>>> made of glass, my love, my eyes,
>>>> filled with wire, life. Once
>>>> I watched a bird’s shadow cross a field
>>>> in the wind: a black hat that could not stop
>>>> tumbling. My eyes are sore
>>>> from seeing, my lips from speaking.
>>>>
>>>> *
>>>>
>>>> How a ribbon curls when pulled
>>>> across a scissor’s blade, I am practicing
>>>> transformation, pain. How the dark hair
>>>> of imagination, uncut, grows down
>>>> to the floor. What is left
>>>> but to make a world, a war?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *
>>>>
>>>> Or a landscape in which to stay alive
>>>> *(ghost flower/house of breath*). Another wish: language
>>>> drilled through ice, through my life.
>>>> If grief is love with nowhere to go, this is
>>>> my mouth turning into snow.
>>>> This is somewhere.
>>>>
>>>> Copyright © 2023 by Allison Benis White. Originally published in
>>>> Poem-a-Day on March 20, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
>>>>
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=3df0ea7af5&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>> Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast
>>>>
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=3fc20e2892&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>>
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=523f9830ef&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>>
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=8d707b2a22&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>>
>>>> “This poem was written after filling out medical intake forms for a
>>>> doctor’s appointment last year. I was grieving for a friend who had ended
>>>> her life, and I was experiencing symptoms I could not quite articulate. The
>>>> poem surprised me with its ending, reminding me that language is a place
>>>> for love to go.”
>>>> *—Allison Benis White*
>>>> [image: Allison Benis White]
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=4114bcdf09&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>>
>>>> Allison Benis White
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=02bb344e79&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>> is the author of *The Wendys *(Four Way Books, 2020) and *Please Bury
>>>> Me in This* (Four Way Books, 2017), winner of the Rilke Prize. The
>>>> recipient of the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of
>>>> America, she is an associate professor at the University of California,
>>>> Riverside.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=531b8dde42&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>> [image: The Wendys]
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=6c4892b334&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>>
>>>> *The Wendys*
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=4ae0f638ed&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>> (Four Way Books, 2020)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=fd2d5e9ec8&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *“A Horse Grazes in My Shadow” by Mat Rasmussen*
>>>> *read more*
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=aa5627c3fb&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>> *“The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity” by Mary Jo
>>>> Bang*
>>>> *read more*
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=cf023ca29d&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>>
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=d0678fd923&e=9de57db1a5>
>>>> Thanks to Diane Seuss
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=dd5bb8e634&e=9de57db1a5>,
>>>> author of *frank: sonnets
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=fca230d7fc&e=9de57db1a5> *(Graywolf
>>>> Press, 2021), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read
>>>> or listen to a Q&A
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=5b8df9101f&e=9de57db1a5> about
>>>> Seuss’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors
>>>> for the year
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=15e8a4ed54&e=9de57db1a5>.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=4b24ed7024&e=9de57db1a5>
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>> --
>> *Roda Avelar*
>> MFA Candidate in Poetry, 2023
>> UC Riverside
>> (she / they)
>> www.rodolfoavelar.com
>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Carlina Perna
> they/them
> *MFA Candidate*
> *CWPA, **UC Riverside*
>
>
>

-- 
*Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, **Distinguished Professor of **Creative Writing*
**She/her & Surname is Hedge Coke, no hyphen**

*     Weird Times, Be Kind*

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
<https://profiles.ucr.edu/app/home/profile/allisonh>

*Director, Writers Week 2021, 2022 <http://writersweek.ucr.edu/>,
Co-Director in Spring 2023 Director, Medical Health and Humanities DE, UCR
School of Medicine*
*Director, **Along the Chaparral, Sandhill Crane Fest*
*Department of Society, Environment, and Health Equity (SEHE), affiliated
faculty*

*author/editor of 18 books*
*Most recent release, National Book Award Finalist, winner Emory Elliot
Book Award, Finalist for the Firecracker Award and ASLE Book Award*
*Look at This Blue
<https://coffeehousepress.org/collections/shop/products/look-at-this-blue>*
(951) 827-5421 department staff
(909) 848-3803 messages - VM/text
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