Forms of Conversion

by Allison Funk

A collection of poems by Allison Funk.

70 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1986

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Born in 1951, Allison Funk grew up in Delaware, was educated at Ohio Wesleyan in Delaware, Ohio, and went on to study poetry at Columbia in the late-Seventies. She married in the early seventies, seems to have converted to Judaism upon a trip to Israel in the late Seventies, moved to Massachusetts, and had two children, boys, in the early Eighties. Then the marriage ended. This, at least, is a biographical text it's possible (with the exception of the date of birth, gotten from other sources) to read "off," Forms of Conversion, Funk's 1986 debut. Much of this volume recesses back into that biography, but here are the poems I think show where the work is going:

"Trestle," "Georgia Power," "Migrations," "Forms of Conversion," "Blindness," "Marsh," "A Distance From the Palace," "The End of a Garden," and "New England Walls".

Here the subject is grief, and joy, as these get formulated neatly by the title poem, with its prescience in relationship to questions of friendship, romance and power: "Copernicus did not invent our poles | of joy and grief when he found the world | was a guest in the galaxy | circulating shyly around an impressive host." Who (other than Copernicus' sun) that impressive host is is one of the volume's crucial questions, and too often the poems erotically misconstrue its nature. From whose point of view? would be one way Funk is trying, in her craft, to answer that question. The poems raise this question of point of view, and its recession into family feeling, again and again.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm most interested in this book's last section, that speaks to themes about love, and love's ability to form a couple, and for that couple to form a child, and then the eventual failure that takes over that love. The book succeeds in building these elements, but I would have preferred to see a bit more investigation. It feels to me that the book was too closely attached to a confessional narrative in its approach.

[Sbinc Burns · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent poet. Accessible and profound.