Poetry. "In OTHERWISE, her stunning first book, Olivia Stiffler makes poetry of life in all its many difficulties and joys. Like Orpheus she turns her gaze to the past and returns to the world singing. Otherwise is full of heart-rending elegy and arresting lament that lead to the creation of poetry both life affirming and resurrective. That poetry can change us fundamentally is the acid test of any poet worth the name, and in Otherwise Stiffler shows us in poem after poem how worthy she is of the name she has earned: Olivia Stiffler, poet."James E. Tolan