"Celestial and lush, Carolyn Oliver’s second poetry collection, The Alcestis Machine, vibrates with connection. The anaphoric incantation 'In another life' opens many of the collection’s poems, taking the reader through a lyric, imaginative wilderness of possibility. I, or we, become—through Oliver’s inventive and formally ambitious lens—cosmologists, orchards, and interpreters, traveling through galaxies, relationships, and climates with our 'suitcase[s] full of stars.' And when we zoom in close to life’s intimacies, like 'the pleasure / of warm water coursing over my hands // after I peeled tonight’s potatoes,' Oliver’s acts of witness tenderly move us from the cosmos to deep inside the body. I am grateful to The Alcestis Machine for all that it illuminates, both as a poet and as an awe-filled reader."

Rachel Mennies, author of "The Naomi Letters"

"Carolyn Oliver’s spellbinding poems invite us to live many lives in this universe of many universes. Why simply brave the underworld to save a beloved when we can traverse across imaginative worlds and inhabit ourselves anew like a 'machine [that] self-destructs and must be made again.' The Alcestis Machine offers us the joy of 'In another life I am …' arresting us with poems of pure movement through the possible. Oliver unlocks worlds of necessary pleasure and worlds of necessary questions: 'This is love, isn’t it? Leaving holes in our stories / as moths make lace from their hunger?' Indeed, in The Alcestis Machine, all 'surfaces break into each other' and I, for one, am so grateful for it."

Hannah Larrabee, author of "Wonder Tissue" and "The Observable Universe"

"Carolyn Oliver's brilliant experimental book is rooted in the mysterious and the innovative avant-garde. Once you read a few poems or prose poems from this dynamic collection: I dare you to stop! Quirky, exquisite, surreal, seductive, an absolute gem of a collection. This book shines, sings with a singular voice and vision. Bravo, poet!"

Jose Hernandez Diaz, author of "Bad Mexican, Bad American"