When we were 4 and 8
by Alexa Gutter
You took our hands and told us about loss,
your sister in her crib gone still one night.
In black and white a photo showed us how
the small coffin was placed in frozen ground.
You were not there. No, you were only two.
Who kept you then? Who sat you in a chair
in some warm kitchen with a slice of bread?
One summer we took pansies to her grave
and Mummi walked ahead, she knew the way.
Years after that you told me of your dream
that Eija had grown up with yellow hair.
She reached for you; you held her in your arms.
I guess we never balanced what you’d lost,
the girls you made, your sister made of dust.
Tell us a little about your writing process. How do you get from all possible blank page to finished work?
Often the poem lives inside of me for a while before it lands on the page. Sometimes, if I have the seed of the poem but it feels too nebulous, I'll turn to poetic form as a method of containment. In my chapbook, for example, I have a blank verse sonnet about a particularly weighty topic. I have a range of interactions with my initial drafts--sometimes a poem feels mostly done right away, and I'll do some minor tinkering over time. Some drafts are awful but worth saving, and those I'll rework quite a bit. It helps to have feedback from a workshop or trusted advisor, of course.
Your work dives into themes of motherhood, grief, and family history just to name a few. What draws your to certain subject matter? What are your muses?
I was extremely close to my mother, so losing her at age 23 was a transformative experience for me. In the decade after her death, arranging the emotional chaos of loss into lines and stanzas was cathartic and also a way of remembering her, telling our story. I also write about my Jewish ancestry and my grandparents' escape from Warsaw to Shanghai during WWII. I am drawn to the past because of how it shows up in the present.
Why is poetry (or in general writing) the artistic medium for you?
I have tried my hand at other things--I loved the stage for years, for example. But poetry has been a constant in my life. W.S. Merwin once said: “Poetry addresses individuals in their most intimate, private, frightened and elated moments … because it comes closer than any other art form to addressing what cannot be said.” Poetry, through sound, through image, has a unique magic. It gives shape to the disorder of human experience.
In addition to being a poet, you are a middle-school teacher. Does your work with students influence or find its way into your work?
I occasionally write about the classroom! For example, in this poem about a 9th grade classroom in April. As an English teacher, I am in the business of words. Watching students interact with new texts or tap out the lines of iambic pentameter on their desks is a great joy. Since I teach middle school, I am also faced with students who are figuring out how to be people. Sometimes my experience as a poet is more helpful with that struggle than any other training I've received.
Tell us a little bit about your forthcoming collection Aiti from Finishing Line Press.
Äiti is a chapbook about motherhood, childhood, loss, and renewal. I wrote these poems in the decade or so after losing my mother, and they take place in the present, in memory, and in the imagined past, in both Finland and Pennsylvania.
Where can we read more of your work, buy your book?
Äiti is available in January 2024, and can be purchased through Finishing Line Press, as well as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers. For more information about me, please visit alexagutter.com.
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.
John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he works as a licensed clinical social worker and adjunct professor. He has been featured on Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM and several of his poems were chosen to be exhibited in Princeton University's 2021 Unique Minds: Creative Voices art show at the Lewis Center for the Arts. He has been nominated 3x for a Pushcart Prize and serves as the Local Lyrics contributor for The Mad Poets Society Blog. His debut chapbook Roadside Oddities: A Poetic Guide to American Oddities was released in early 2022 and can be purchased at www.johnwojtowicz.com. John lives with his wife and two children in Upper Deerfield, NJ.