Everyday Kintsugi

The poems in Alison Lake’s Everyday Kintsugi come to us as sprinkles of powdered gold, filling in the cracks of past wounds, the suffering of ancestors, the pain of wars across the world. Lake fearlessly proclaims: “I will walk in that darkness, in shadow/and I will spy the beauty/in the muffled edges.” A deep care for all living beings weaves through these reverent poems—for the road-struck raccoon, a purple finch carried to class, and her own daughter emerging after a dangerous and difficult birth. This necessary collection invites us to honor and bless the darkness that eventually turns “into rich loam,” out of which blooms “the new blossom,” offering us a deeper, truer kind of beauty.

 

-- James Crews, author of Turning Toward Grief and Breathing Room

Alison Lake’s poems reflect the tenderness and pain of the natural world, as experienced through the eyes of a mother. She simultaneously celebrates the efficiency of bacteria and vultures who help compost dead things so the earth might breathe, while mourning the unnecessary destruction wrought by human greed and machine culture. Here is an eco-poetics that speaks to the world in clear accessible language and imagery.

 

-- Alison Luterman, author of Hard Listening

These are powerful, tender, unflinching poems, in which Alison Lake renders the sacred labor of healing, mothering, and making a home for oneself in the world with steady attention, careful observation, and an open heart. 
 

-- Holly Wren Spaulding, author of Familiars and founder of Poetry F