Books | Anthologies | Magazines
The View from Saturn - LSU Press, Fall 2014
"The View from Saturn, Alice Friman's sixth collection of poems, demonstrates a poetic vision that can, at one moment, zoom out to catch a glimpse of the second largest planet in our solar system and, at another, zoom in to a fetal hand the size of a decimal point. It is through this controlled transposition of perspectives that Friman allows her readers to not only see the world with a more focused lens but also read it anew with an imaginative mind. The poems of this collection touch on the cosmic, the quotidian, and the volatility of life in between - that precarious space we inescapably occupy - through an adept and delicate crafting of words that Friman has, like constellations, "clicked into place." - Elizabeth Kim in American Book Review
Vinculum - LSU Press, 2011
"These poems are evidence that, book by book, she’s becoming stronger in spirit, smarter, more resourceful in coping with pain and difficulty, more passionate about trees and creatures, sharper in her insights and observations, and generally more capable of calling up poetry’s alchemical powers to convert despair into song and discouragement into a battle cry.
. . . [S]he ends up making a making a gift to us readers out here on the other side of the page. But as we read, we’re aware of her disinterest in us and our wanting and needing the poem to give us something useful. Which mades her all the more trustworthy." – David Huddle in The Hollins Critic
NEW BY
ALICE FRIMAN
Reviews for ON THE OVERNIGHT TRAIN - New and Selected Poems by Alice Friman
"Stricken, amused, this poet welcomes the dire, the ordinary, the strange, love from all angles into years and years. Under the autobiographical, it’s the Greeks, the Bible, great paintings, great literature: backdrop and wild intervention in our motley human business. The playful beauty can’t fool us. A dead-earnest curiosity’s at work. Reverence. A poet telling us what we must know."
- Marianne Boruch
"Alice Friman writes poems like no other. Whether rummaging the storehouse of memory, humanizing the celestial, or pondering from the ‘high / hill of age’ poetry’s ageless subjects—life, love, and death—she refracts it all through the dual prisms of her inimitable wit and her pain-etched but supremely open heart. Prepare, reader, to laugh as she breaks yours."
- Mark Drew
BLOOD WEATHER - LSU Press, Fall 2019
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"Blood Weather, Alice Friman's sharply etched new collection of poetry, reminds readers that times of reckoning are marked by blood: the knife, the sword, the cutting word. Blood runs through our history, stories, religion, and art, and we cannot help but play our part by adding to the storm of "fang and claw" and its inherent sorrow. Friman traces this unending path through biblical tales, the war of the sexes, the continuum of art, and her own family and personal life. Her poems reflect on figures ranging from Lady Macbeth--whom Friman sees in the blood-red tree outside her bedroom window--to Cain and Abel in the biblical account of the first murder, through Judge Judy's frustrations when faced with the death of a marriage, to the poet herself as a child learning to read "the ancient writing of the butcher block / streaked with cuts and sacrifice" and the butcher's hands, "blunt-fingered and stained." By turns stark and resilient, the poems in Blood Weather draw on tragic themes and painful memories to evoke the tumult of human nature."
--LSU Press
The Book of the Rotten Daughter - BkMk Press, 2006
"Alice Friman has grit. Her use of the imperative throughout the book could be seen as an invitation, but with Friman, it is command, and the muscularity of the poems backs her up. Her unflinching gaze at the past can be encapsulated within the line, "Tell it another way," which works not only as Friman urging herself toward truth but also toward what all writers strive for: a connection between writer and reader. She wants to capture in words, as clearly as possible, the emotional truth of a situation, and of the past. As the title of this review implies, Friman’s commands are equal opportunity and address both poet and her readers—pulling, pushing and prodding us with her exact language, and pulling, pushing and prodding herself for language and for story. These poems are not easy, either in the telling or in the idea—Friman reaches for ways to retell, to communicate to her readers, and she doesn’t allow the poem to merely lie on the page but has it, like the father in the dream, reach out for us." – Katie Chaple, Chattahoochee Review, Spring / Summer 2007
Zoo - University of Arkansas Press, 1999
Winner, 1998 Ezra Pound Poetry Award / Judge: X. J. Kennedy
Co-Winner, 2001 Sheila Margaret Motton Prize, NEPC / Judge: Jennifer Rose
Inverted Fire - BkMk Press, 1997 - 2nd printing, 1998
Reporting from Corinth - The Barnwood Press, 1984
SELECTED ANTHOLOGIES:
Inspired Georgia, U of Georgia P / Georgia Council for the Arts
Far Out: Poems on the '60s, Wings Press
The World is Charged: Poetic Engagements with Gerard Manley Hopkins, Clemson UP
The Doll Collection, Terrapin Books
Stone River Sky, Negative Capability Press
Women Write Resistance, Hyacinth Girl Press
The Southern Poetry Anthology,Vol. 5: Georgia, Texas Review Press
And Know This Place: Poetry of Indiana, Indiana Historical Society Press
Pushcart Prize XXXVI: Best of the Small Presses, Pushcart Press
Visiting Dr. Williams, Univ. of Iowa Press
Blood to Remember, rev. 2nd ed., Time Being Books
The Best American Poetry 2009, Scribner
When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry by American Women, Autumn House Press
Keener Sounds: Selected Poems from The Georgia Review
Worlds in Our Words, Prentice-Hall
Writing Poems, 5th and 6th eds., Longman
Orpheus and Company, New England
Claiming the Spirit Within, Beacon
The Poet Dreaming in the Artist's House, Milkweed
A More Perfect Union, St. Martin's
What's Become of Eden, Slapering Hol
The Poets' Grimm, Story Line
Museum Studies, Blackwell
Visiting Emily, University of Iowa Press
Red, White, and Blues, University of Iowa Press
In a Fine Frenzy, University of Iowa Press
New & Selected (30th-anniversary anthology from The Ohio Review)
Essential Love, Grayson
Strongly Spent: 50 Years of Poetry from Shenandoah
Kindled Terraces, Truman State
SELECTED POETRY JOURNALS & MAGAZINES:
Friman's poems have been published in Ploughshares, Southern Rev, Gettysburg Rev, New Letters, Shenandoah, Georgia Rev, Boulevard, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Massachusetts Rev, Crazyhorse, Southwest Rev, Plume/Plume Anthology, Western Humanities Rev, Poetry East, Southern Poetry Rev, Negative Capability, Women's Rev of Books, Field, Ekphrasis, Subtropics, MacGuffin, Hotel Amerika, Chattahoochee Rev, Florida Rev, Quarterly West, Image, Chelsea, North American Rev, Five Points, Manoa, Northwest Rev, Cloudbank, Malahat Rev, Poetry Northwest, Potomac Rev, Indiana Rev, Laurel Rev, Hollins Critic, Lake Effect, Alaska Quarterly Rev, Southern Quarterly, American Literary Rev, Missouri Rev Online, Cortland Rev, I-70 Rev, JuxtaProse, Hamilton Stone Rev, Valparaiso Poetry Rev, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Vox Populi, American Journal of Poetry, Poetry Rev, London Rev of Books, Stand. Poems in 15 countries.
RECORDINGS:
New Letters on the Air tapes of 1998 interview and 2001 reading are available, call 888-548-2247
The Poetry Foundation has recordings of "Permanent Press" and "Seeing It Through." and were featured on the program aired Summer of 2006.
CHAPBOOKS:
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Driving for Jimmy Wonderland, Barnwood Press,1992
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Insomniac Heart, Years Press, 1990, 1991
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Song to My Sister, Writers' Center Press, 1979
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A Question of Innocence, Raintree Press, Bloomington, IN, 1978
ONLINE:
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Poetry Daily
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The Innisfree Poetry Journal 9
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Poetry Foundation, "Poem of the Day"
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Cortland Review
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Verse Daily
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Valparaiso Poetry Review
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Prairie Schooner
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Gettysburg Review
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Noneuclidian Café
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Plume
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Hamilton Stone Review
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Shenandoah
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Missouri Review