On the evening of Tuesday, Oct. 21, the atmosphere inside Downtown Fremont’s Banter Bookshop hummed with quiet excitement as a small audience gathered inside to listen to Bay Area poet Alison Luterman’s reading from her newest book, Hard Listening.
Hard Listening is a collection of poems in which Luterman recounts her personal journey of learning to sing, an interest sparked by being surrounded by her musician husband’s instruments and having spare time during the pandemic. Luterman, who had taken online voice lessons to sing with her husband, explained that the process was both grueling and insightful.
In her poem, “What I Learned,” she writes, “It wasn’t until I stood at the piano myself and quavered and broke and reached for the high notes that weren’t there and stumbled my way to beauty that I learned singing’s made of sweat and spittle.”
Luterman, who had taken online voice lessons to sing with her husband, explained that the process was both grueling and insightful
Luterman’s journey of learning to sing reminded her of the female musicians she grew up listening to and led her to reflect on the female singers who were engaged in the politics of using their voice. These are women Luterman pays homage to in her book, through works she has endearingly named her “diva poems”—her inspiration ranging from the voice of musician Karen Carpenter, which she fell in love with as a kid, to the resilience of Ukrainian women singing through the invasion of their country in 2022.
Throughout the reading, Luterman invited members of the audience to request specific poems or to ask questions between readings.
One key discussion point was about Luterman’s writing process—one audience member asked, “How do you find the words to put together?” Luterman offered a candid look into her process, explaining how, at times, it’s simply sitting at a computer and letting loose a “stream of consciousness” onto the page, and other times, it’s going through many revisions of her work before it’s ready to be published.
The discussion also touched on her initial inspiration. “How was it singing with your husband?” one audience member asked. “It was really hard. If I was just a little off, for him, it was like hearing nails on a chalkboard,” Luterman said with a laugh.
For some, the event was a first introduction to Luterman’s work. Susan Hakes Taggitch, a retired attendee, came to the reading hoping to learn more about Luterman’s poetry. Taggitch said, “I’m interested in reading more of her work now that I’ve listened to this.”
