<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;"><header class="entry-header container_16"><div class="grid_16"><div class="title"><h1 class="">Alison Luterman</h1><h2 class="subtitle">The Largest Possible Life</h2></div></div></header><div class="grid_8"><p class="">Join New School host Irwin Keller for an evening of talk with poet and playwright Alison Luterman about how we live our lives to the fullest, and how we tell our stories – turning our days into poetry, written sometimes in ink and sometimes in flesh and blood, breath, and action.</p></div><div class="grid_8"><div class="box"><a href="https://www.commonweal.org/events/?eid=4542" class="button">Register Here</a><h3 class="">Thursday, April 6<br class="">7:00 pm - 8:30 pm</h3><hr style="clear: both;" class=""><div class="event_info">Congregration Ner Shalom<br class="">Held in Cotati<br class="">Suggested Donation $15</div><div class="event_info"><br class=""></div></div><div class=""><div class="addthis_default_style addthis_toolbox "><div class="atclear"></div></div></div><div class="meta"></div></div><div class="bio"><div class="grid_16"><h3 class="">Alison Luterman</h3><p class=""><em class="">Alison Luterman is a poet, essayist and playwright. Her books include the poetry collections </em>Desire Zoo, The Largest Possible Life<em class="">, and</em> See How We Almost Fly<em class="">; and a collection of essays, </em>Feral City<em class="">. Luterman’s plays include </em>Saying Kaddish With My Sister, Hot Water, Glitter and Spew, Oasis<em class="">, and</em> The Recruiter<em class="">, and a musical, </em>The Chain<em class="">. Her writings have been published in many journals and anthologies. She has taught writing at The Writing Salon in Berkeley, the Esalen Institute, and the Omega Institute, as well as at high schools, juvenile halls, and poetry festivals. She is a political activist and a homebody and a dog person who fell in love with a cat. She lives in a rambling old house in Oakland with her musician husband and the aforementioned cat, dividing her time between writing and looking for her keys.</em></p><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class="">Because even the word obstacle is an obstacle</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Try to love everything that gets in your way:</div><div class="">the Chinese women in flowered bathing caps</div><div class="">murmuring together in Mandarin, doing leg exercises in your lane</div><div class="">while you execute thirty-six furious laps,</div><div class="">one for every item on your to-do list.</div><div class="">The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water</div><div class="">like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side,</div><div class="">whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.</div><div class="">Teachers all. Learn to be small</div><div class="">and swim through obstacles like a minnow</div><div class="">without grudges or memory. Dart</div><div class="">toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking Obstacle</div><div class="">is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl</div><div class="">idly lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:</div><div class="">Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,</div><div class="">in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.</div><div class="">Be glad she’ll have that to look at all her life,</div><div class="">and keep going, keep going. Swim by an uncle</div><div class="">in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew</div><div class="">how to hold his breath underwater,</div><div class="">even though kids aren’t allowed at this hour. Someday,</div><div class="">years from now, this boy</div><div class="">who is kicking and flailing in the exact place</div><div class="">you want to touch and turn</div><div class="">will be a young man, at a wedding on a boat</div><div class="">raising his champagne glass in a toast</div><div class="">when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.</div><div class="">He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,</div><div class="">but he’ll come up like a cork,</div><div class="">alive. So your moment</div><div class="">of impatience must bow in service to a larger story, </div><div class="">because if something is in your way it is</div><div class="">going your way, the way</div><div class="">of all beings; towards darkness, towards light.</div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Alison Luterman</div><div class=""><em class=""><br class=""></em></div></div></div></blockquote><div class=""><div apple-content-edited="true" class=""></div></div></body></html>