Hard Listening is a testament of hope, celebrating the fierce feminine in song and on the streets with odes to a pair of girls hanging out on a neighbor's porch, a naked woman in the locker room of the gym, a mother lifting the weight of her own pain off her child. Here, Alison Luterman weaves poems about singers, activists, and lovers of all stripes.
The core of the book recounts her journey to learn how to sing-missed notes, warbly vibrato and all. During the pandemic, she started taking voice lessons in order to sing and collaborate with her musician husband. She did not start out with a firm grasp of pitch or a great sense of rhythm, but had a lot of enthusiasm, a wonderful teacher, and a willingness to work hard. Learning to "speak music"-his primary language-was the key that opened them up to an unexpected depth of intimacy. The process of learning to sing reminded her of all the singers she had idolized from a young age. She began to listen to those women again, this time attuning to their skill and what their real lives were like. It became clear to Alison that beyond the glamour lay a world of challenges and sometimes heartbreak that she had not fully reckoned with before. The poems she wrote in homage to these great women singers form the core of Hard Listening.
In the course of her investigation, the United States was tacking right and her poems began to reflect these fraught politics. She found herself redefining her calling as a poet, writing to be in service to those fighting for democracy, kindness, decency, and justice.
"Alison Luterman is one of my favorite poetic voices. I eat her poetry like buttered bread and it goes straight into my depleted spiritual bloodstream."
- Mirabai Starr, author of Wild Mercy and Ordinary Mysticism
"She sings the song of an America for which we almost forgot the lyrics and can barely recall the tune, but it lifts and consoles us. Thank you, Alison."
- Robert Reich, professor emeritus, UC Berkeley, and author of Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America
"Luterman embraces becoming 'someone / hollowed-out enough to listen' with warm authenticity. Despite the challenges of pandemic and politics, there is a harmony revealed in Hard Listening: we can survive hardship."
- Ellen Bass, author of nine poetry collections, most recently Indigo
