Bless This Home by Alison Woods

What a joy and what a solace to have spent time with the elegant and ardent poems of Bless This Home. Here is the story of a life—from the questions of childhood through the exhilaration of falling in love and on through the challenges of motherhood—that, in its particular and personal details, both reflects and teaches us something about our own. Bless This Home is a prayer for all of us.

–Lynn Melnick

Inside these pages is a poetry of passionate witness and hopeful wondering through precision metaphors (“algae on a conch”) and a sound-scape of softly assonant or jarring word pairings. Woods is masterful with pacing; her stop-start motion reveals a mind knocking about the lines in ways that resonate beyond the lines. Things are hidden: rhymes and word play are grounded in vernacular goings on (“rattle of dishes on a knick-knack shelf”) that stop you in your tracks.

–Diane Mehta

Within these pages you will find sorrow and solace, blessings, and odes, lessons as great as the cosmos, and as tiny as an ant. Every poem is a glowing treasure.

–Alisa Amador