Äiti by Alexa Gutter

(1 customer review)

$17.99

 

Rock smashes scissors. Scissors cut paper. Paper smothers rock. These are hard facts. Ipso facto, Alexa Gutter brings Äiti back to life in these glorious, full-body elegies. Put your face in these poems. Your grieving heart will thank you for it.

–Jerry Williams, Admission

 

The evocative poems of Äiti speak in a tender, searching voice. In this compelling generational story, Alexa Gutter addresses loss without pity or false tropes.

 –J. C. Todd, Beyond Repair

 

In this, her beautiful first collection of poetry, Alexa Gutter explores the haunting question: what is left after grief? Her poems – both delicate and haunting – translate the lexicon of suffering and depression, that “cold silk billowing around us,” into a language of renewal. While “days feel like a breath caught endlessly in the throat,” Gutter asks the lyric to do the difficult but essential work of embracing small moments of wonder. There is so much she has to tell us; how we are “marked by what we repeat” and how to find release.

–Nancy K. Pearson, The Whole by Contemplation of a Single Bone

 

 

Category:

Description

Äiti

by Alexa Gutter

Paper

$17.99

979-8-88838-430-5

2024

The poems of Äiti explore the anxieties of childhood, the connection between mother and daughter, and the wellspring of grief that follows a tragic death. Finnish lakes and Pennsylvania rivers flow through these poems, which live in the present, in memory, and in the imagined past. By examining the space after loss, Äiti shows how longing changes us and how we are inextricably entwined with the ones we love.

Alexa Gutter is a middle school teacher, poet, and mother. She was named poet laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 2013. The daughter of a Finnish mother and a father born as a Jewish refugee in China, she often explores her heritage and ties to the past in her poetry. She currently lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania with her family. Her website is AlexaGutter.com.

 

 

1 review for Äiti by Alexa Gutter

  1. MaryJo Greco –

    I bought this book(at the Book Bakery in West Chester PA)because I love to support local business’s and artist. I did not know what the title meant but I was intrigued by the cover so I bought it and and so happy that I did. Alexa’s work is powerfully moving, heartfelt and real. I personally connected with many of the poems in this book and would highly recommend it. I will be purchasing more copies to give as gifts. Thank you Alexa for sharing your heart.

Add a review

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related products