Cracks - Paperback

by Diane Kistner (Editor), Jane Ellen Glasser (Author)

The art of Kintsugi, using gold to fill cracks or mend shards in Japanese ceramics, suggests that when a thing has been damaged by time, it becomes more beautiful. So, too, for human experience, offers Jane Ellen Glasser. In her sixth poetry collection, the tone is one of gratitude; Glasser treats even serious subjects, such as late love and life's end, with wit and a light hand. In her 70th year, Glasser does not bemoan aging, but, rather chooses to acknowledge, even celebrate the inevitable accidents of experience that grow a life. In the closing poem, she offers guidance to her future eulogist. Just as the Japanese cracked pot is imperfectly perfect, she tells us how she wants to be remembered: "Say I was perfectly flawed. / Say I was human."

Author Biography

Jane Ellen Glasser's poetry has been published in numerous journals, such as The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Georgia Review. Glasser co-founded the nonprofit arts organization and journal New Virginia Review. She has delivered various presentations and workshops to audiences as diverse as students in the Poet-in-the-Schools Program and jail inmates. She won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry for Light Persists (2005) and the Poetica Publishing Chapbook Contest for The Long Life (2011). Cracks is her sixth poetry collection.