Black Bell

“Like sunflowers turning towards the sun, readers will turn to this astounding poet.” —Booklist (Starred Review)

“The range of Rollins’ poetic skill is remarkable. The result is a collection of poetry which is magnificently crafted, readable, and crucially important.” —New York Journal of Books

“In poem after poem, Rollins demonstrates that she is finding her own way, shining a light, making darkness apparent.” —Publishers Weekly 

“In a stunning debut collection of poems, Alison C. Rollins makes use of imagery relating to archives, texts, figures from history, card catalogs, classifications—libraries as evocative troves of imagery, blurring eras, familiar phrases and identities.” —Naomi Shihab Nye, New York Times Magazine 

“Much-welcomed newcomer Rollins offers keen insights that librarians and their readers will appreciate.” —Library Journal 

“Some dense and haunting, Rollins’ poems are always precise and exacting of attention from the reader…The poems continue to give upon each reading.” —Ms. Magazine 

“Alison Rollins’s debut collection sparkles with a compassionate intelligence that relentlessly catalogs suffering in the hopes that enumeration might somehow assuage or make meaning of it, or at least serve as a mode of connection.” –The Adroit Journal

Yes, these poems are lit and enlightened, but Alison C. Rollins’s lively charms are always rooted to a notion that ‘only things kept in the dark know the true weight of light.’ The small and large darknesses catalogued here make this a book of remarkable depth. [Library of Small Catastrophes] is an electrifying debut. —Terrance Hayes