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Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry
Ohio Violence
Ohio Violence starts with scandal: the narrator leads the high school football coach into the cornfields, but as she promises, "nothing happened." In the fields, in the woods, in the dark water of Ohio, something is happening. Girls disappear, turn on each other. Men watch from the rearview as the narrator hedges, changes her mind, then shows all in this break-out collection of bittersweet and cataclysmic lyrics. "Alison Stine writes, ‘Believe me.' I am telling you a story,' and the story she tells us we believe as it unfolds. The poems are moving—beautiful, tragic, death-haunted, and uncanny—like old folk songs and murder ballads—lovely on the tongue, heavy on the heart. As a narrator, Stine does not and will not swerve when faced with the brutal, the adamantine and the ordinary damage that equals a life."—Eric Pankey, judge and author of Reliquaries ALISON STINE is a 2008 winner of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship. She was born in Indiana and grew up in Ohio. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she is the author of the chapbook Lot of My Sister, winner of the Wick Prize. Her poems have appeared in such journals as The Paris Review, Poetry, and The Kenyon Review. This is her first book. She lives in Athens, Ohio.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published April 28, 2009
About the author
Alison Stine
11 books274 followersAlison Stine grew up in rural Ohio and now lives in Colorado. Her first novel Road Out of Winter won the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. Recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Geographic, she has published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and elsewhere.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 1, 2011
Stine’s first book is filled with narrative poems that juxtapose the seemingly idyllic setting of midwestern Ohio- farms, hunting, and high school sports- against tales of many kinds of loss.
The black snake is dead in the road.
In the rising bands of heat, his head
is gone, or nearly, body divided
by the flat print of tires. Already, the birds.
“Tiresias”
The theme of truth or fiction weaves through the collection. Tension builds in individual poems, and also in the progression of the book, as Stine talks about murder, girls disappearing, bones, school bullying.
After the girls died, the deer came from the woods.
It was late. Deer gathered on the patio
as if there was a party…………..
“Eveything Is An Instrument”
We’re never quite sure if any of these events actually occurred, and in “When the Hand is a Knife”, the narrator asks:
“Does it matter if it didn’t happen?”
Many of the poems are gothic in nature, full of disturbing images that verge on horror. Stine’s lines are spare, frequently terse, which adds to the sense of tension.
…………..They have found
her bones in the park, scattered circuitous
by animals amid the fretted leaves…………..
“After The Body”
Give these poems time to sink in, to settle, then read them again. Then buy her new book, Wait!!
The black snake is dead in the road.
In the rising bands of heat, his head
is gone, or nearly, body divided
by the flat print of tires. Already, the birds.
“Tiresias”
The theme of truth or fiction weaves through the collection. Tension builds in individual poems, and also in the progression of the book, as Stine talks about murder, girls disappearing, bones, school bullying.
After the girls died, the deer came from the woods.
It was late. Deer gathered on the patio
as if there was a party…………..
“Eveything Is An Instrument”
We’re never quite sure if any of these events actually occurred, and in “When the Hand is a Knife”, the narrator asks:
“Does it matter if it didn’t happen?”
Many of the poems are gothic in nature, full of disturbing images that verge on horror. Stine’s lines are spare, frequently terse, which adds to the sense of tension.
…………..They have found
her bones in the park, scattered circuitous
by animals amid the fretted leaves…………..
“After The Body”
Give these poems time to sink in, to settle, then read them again. Then buy her new book, Wait!!
August 4, 2018
A suggestion from a fellow poetry lover. I am still not sure I really want to give it 3 stars. The poems are well written but I am not a huge fan of foreboding and evil. I know this exists. I cannot put into words how I feel even writing this. I volunteer to help women, to shine the truth on hate, to protect the rights of the weak, This thin book made me want to take a shower and scrub the nasty feelings it left behind. Three stars because it is well written.
April 19, 2025
A strong collection of poems featuring scenes of life in a the rural midwest, pregnancy, and death. I enjoyed the first three fourths, but felt that the final pieces fell a bit flat. I think I was hoping for more thematic resolution. Either way, the book has several beautiful and ominous pieces.
I bought a signed copy for a dollar from a street vendor.
I bought a signed copy for a dollar from a street vendor.
March 27, 2015
an inner projection. as if god, who else, has given you a machete then placed you in the middle of an open field. Alison Stine is a poet whose language means what it transcribes. this book took six years to reach me. I recognize it. I come from violence. I inflict, on others, Ohio.
January 1, 2016
An interesting collection of poems that seem to be largely autobiographical.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews