Alice D'Alessio

photo by Brent Nicastro

CONTACT

adalessio@tds.net

Alice D'Alessio
Madison, Wisconsin

BIO

Alice is a Madison poet who spends the other half of her life managing and enjoying the family wilderness land in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin. Her poems often reflect the wonder and appreciation of the natural world, and/or the environmentalist's vision. Social/political commentary and family/love relationships are also favorite subjects, rendered with a serious or light touch. Her poems have been published courtesy of the Wisconsin Academy Review, Earth's Daughters, North Coast Review, Ariel, Free Press, The Kerf, Fox Cry Review and others. They have won awards from The Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Wisconsin Regional Writers, and she was a runner-up in the Wisconsin Academy Review Poetry Contest in 2002. Alice also co-edited the Wisconsin Poets' Calendar in 2003, and in 2005 Alice won the Posner Book-Length Poetry Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers for her book A Blessing of Trees.

A former editor and communications director, Alice is the co-author of the 2003 biography Uncommon Sense: The Life of Marshall Erdman.

PUBLICATIONS

A Blessing of Trees , Cross+Roads Press, 2004- $10.00 + postage

BOOKINGS

2008

POEM

GATHERING SEEDS, MARCH

Why do I think
I can salvage enough to matter?
you ask again
on this before-spring day –
russet-brown and bleached grass at the Valley.
By now, most have escaped their husks,
have blown and scattered, nestled
in cracks, in mouse gullets
bird droppings.

But I need more Indian grass
and tall bush-clover to seed the prairie.
I stumble empty-handed through bramble
and patchy snow,
and there you are
waiting at the bend in the path
jeaned and flannel-shirted.
Turned halfway from me
toward the stream, you clutch
your bouquet, a scraggled fistful of tan grasses
seed-heads intact – because
you know I want them.

You do this thing for me.
And I
am riven with love.

- Alice D'Alessio

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