From the Belly FOOD

About Karren Alenier

Karren LaLonde Alenier is author of eight poetry collections, including how we hold on from Broadstone Books. Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On, her jazz opera with composer Bill Banfield, premiered in New York by Encompass New Opera Theatre in 2005.

Praise for From the Belly FOOD

“Pace yourself. Brace yourself. Open your senses. Open your mind,” editor Karren Alenier encourages readers in the introduction to this second volume of From the Belly, in which contemporary poets respond to Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, this time writing in dialogue with the “Food” section of Stein’s volume. We read Stein’s words—perplexing, astonishing, infuriating—alongside the poets’ responses—challenging, surprising, illuminating. These 38  contemporary writers offer us new ways to understand Stein’s work, but Stein’s work also offers us fresh ways to think about these new poems. We see in this collection, as Tara Betts writes in her poem responding to Stein’s “Vegetable,” “all this tasting this searching this growing from the delicate root / taking hold then boldly blooming from seasons and pollutions / this rising from the dark defiant earth.” —Deborah M. Mix, co-editor of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Gertrude Stein

Rhubarb. Cake. Celery. Chicken…and I have only just begun to mention the range of foodstuffs and corresponding dream states generated by these responses to Stein’s Tender Buttons. The reader cannot go wrong when they walk into this kitchen. The recipes handed to them are as flexible and varied as the poems written here in response. So go ahead, throw in your particular spices and feast to your heart’s and mind’s content. Write poems. Bake bread. —Indran Amirthanayagam, author of The Runner’s Almanac

You may or may not want to read From the Belly on an empty stomach, but pull up a chair and loosen your belt for this feast of a poetry collection where a mix of seasoned contemporary poets stir Gertrude Stein’s poems and pans of roast beef, chicken, and a motley of vegetables (tender, of course!). From the Belly takes its inspiration from seminal poet Gertrude Stein who turns our attention to language, surprising associations, food, and yes, biting commentary about all that makes us human. I suspect we will be reading these response poems for a long while, revisiting Stein, and stitching and unstitching our trousers from this bountiful literary feast. —Abdul Ali, author of Trouble Sleeping