A Review of Allison Field Bell’s All That Blue
By Rachel Turney

Allison Field Bell’s debut poetry collection, All That Blue, is a coming-of-age tale of a girl finding herself, particularly her sexuality. The protagonist is a traveler, searching the world for self-discovery. Who is Allison in California? Who is Allison in Greece? Is she a lover, a friend, a lost woman? 

Field Bell grapples with place in her collection. She is rearranging herself and her life both figuratively and literally and wrestles with the idea of mother and daughter and where she fits in this narrative and loop of womanhood. In “How is This Supposed to End” Allison even says, “…I want to be anything other than woman.” This feeling resonates with most women, and indeed most people, who have, at some point, questioned themselves and maybe even their existence. 

A fantastic writer of the natural world, Field Bell has a beautiful way of gently connecting nature to human emotion, human form, and human experience. Most poets inevitably write about nature, but for some reason the way Field Bell does it hits differently. She is an observer, an ethereal thing that is part of and not part of the scene. 

In keeping with the title, the color blue does run through the collection: time spent by the Aegean, the blue waters of the Pacific, and the blue sky. Field Bell uses the word blue to describe landscape and scenery and, in the final poem of the collection, her connection to the art of Georgia O’Keeffe. This culminating poem, “O’Keeffe Country”, goes beyond the ekphrastic to capture a woman becoming herself. 

Field Bell examines what identity means to her and the idea of what a woman should be. At the end of the book, questions haven’t been answered so much as Field Bell has created new ones for herself and her reader. All That Blue is a thoughtful autobiographical gathering of pieces held together like a tapestry, but one that is unraveling. The threads are used to make something even more beautiful.

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