All That Blue traverses geographies of place, mental illness, coming-of-age, and desire. The poems take on a variety of free-verse forms and hinge on images of the natural world as they reflect the speaker's interiority. Blue forms the connective tissue between natural places; desert and ocean are elided through their blueness. So too do the interior and the exterior landscapes combine: a blueness of mind and of body. All That Blue contends with questions of identity and how to represent the self on the page, ultimately landing on a shape that is both fragment and shadow, a shape that demands the logic of lyric. "You don't mean /to write poems about bodies (or women)" says the speaker in this edgy collection of taut, chiseled poems, "You just want to write poetry." But this damaged, determined, fiercely honest speaker can't seem to write poems about anything else. She's compelled to make "this heavy thing they call woman" her poems' subject, along with the desire to "know how to want a body like mine," the perpetual unease of inhabiting a "body afraid of what it could hold if you let it." In All That Blue , Allison Field Bell proves again and again, incontrovertibly, that this is very much the stuff of poetry-and exquisite poetry, at that. -Jacqueline Osherow , author of Divine Ratios All That Blue cleverly examines the inherent dilemma of trying to exist freely as a woman in a world of gendered roles and violent realities. The varied poems shine as free verse, using intricate form or as prose poetry as well. Allison Field Bell has written a necessary, dynamic debut. -Jose Hernandez Diaz , author of Bad Mexican, Bad American and The Parachutist Allison Field Bell 's All That Blue is a walk through a landscape where memory and desire intertwine like wildflowers and wind. These poems are artifacts of excavation; they unearth the tender roots of childhood dreams, the tangled paths of mental health, and the evolving definitions of womanhood. Through her careful use of imagery-a guppy-filled jar, a longed-for horse, the stark beauty of the Sonoran Desert-Field Bell makes emotion tangible. This collection does not fear shadows but brings light by offering readers an empathetic voice that resonates long after the page is turned. -CMarie Fuhrman , author of Salmon Weather: Writing from the Land of No Return Allison Field Bell is a a multi-genre writer from California. Her debut short story collection, Bodies of Other Women, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. She is also the author of three chapbooks: Stitch (flash fiction, forthcoming from Chestnut Review Books), Without Woman or Body (Poetry, Finishing Line Press), and Edge of the Sea (Nonfiction, CutBank Books). Find her at allisonfieldbell.com