From the Fool to the World

Alison Stone

The poems in this collection make up a series in the voices of the Major Arcana of the tarot. Stone’s poetry extends and complements her own work as a visual artist in creating the Stone Tarot. The poems are rich with visual language and are filled with stories of light, journeys, and transformation: If you won’t dance, / then who’s the fool? / Inside my cloth bag – apple, table, stallion, sky. / Come! The rich / cliff tempts like wine.

Alison Stone’s poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Poetry International, Chelsea, Barrow Street, and a variety of other journals and anthologies. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin award. Her first book, They Sing at Midnight, won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award and was published by Many Mountains Moving Press.

A visual artist, she spent ten years painting the images of the tarot, which were published as The Stone Tarot. She earns her living as a Gestalt therapist in New York City and Nyack.

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Excerpt

The Emperor

Every life needs edges.
I protect you from the meadow’s
wanton splendor,
passion running amok.

Lean against my loaw
the way a child lets go
into a father’s strong arms. Pruned
and tethered vines bear stronger fruit.