I Was a First Alto in the 1980s

An astonishingly insightful and deeply felt collection of poems that meditate on time and the many stages of a woman's life--from girlhood to adolescence, from being a young wife and mother, to seeing your children grow up and depart--by the celebrated poet and bestselling author of A Working Girl Can't Win

"The strength of Garrison's poems is their ordinariness, in both language and subject matter. They are not pretentious. They speak to the reader directly: this is a conversation with a likable next-door neighbor."--The New York Times

Deborah Garrison broke open the doors of poetry with A Working Girl Can't Win, a collection The New York Times called "a highbrow analogue to Sex and the City," and then spoke profoundly to a changed post-9-11 world as she wrote of raising a family in The Second Child. Now she returns with an extraordinary new collection, inviting readers into her poems again in her conversational style like a wise, welcoming friend. But beneath this seeming simplicity is a recognition that is far from simple, for each poem in these pages investigates the most elusive element of our lives--the slippery power of time, and how it shapes our perception of who we are.

The poet is a girl, innocently reaching for the adult novels on her parents' bookcase; in a blink, she's a college singer; then she's a young wife in the city, late for work. She's a mother at the kitchen sink, overhearing her daughter studying with her boyfriend; she's in the hospital holding her own mother's hand in her final days. Past eras collide in poetry's eternal present, as Garrison candidly illuminates a woman's most private moments, giving them language and meaning while revealing the startling beauty of life itself. Taken together, the poems of I Was a First Alto in the 1980s show why Garrison is a treasured American poet, one of exceptional intelligence and literary gifts.