Äiti - by Alexa Gutter (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

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