Alicia Ostriker - A Poet’s Poet and MCLS Book Festival Keynote Speaker

Several years ago, the Mercer County Library System launched a community poetry donation project. As I reviewed the donated books, I noticed a recurring theme in the publication notes: many poets expressed heartfelt gratitude to a particular mentor who had inspired and guided their poetic journeys. The name stood out to me—not just for its frequency, but for its familiarity: Professor Alicia Ostriker, an acclaimed poet and scholar.

Her influence and generosity come as no surprise. Years ago, I had the privilege of studying Bible literature under her at Rutgers, where she was a beloved professor of English and Creative Writing for forty years. The class was small and intimate, enriched by lively weekly discussions. She invited us to join her for poetry readings and open mic nights at a local coffee shop, cultivating a warm and welcoming space for budding voices. On the final day of class, she brought wine to celebrate our journey together. It was then that I truly began to pay attention to her poetry—and to the quiet power it holds.

I still recall the haunting mastectomy poems from The Crack in Everything (I have a signed copy!), a 1996 National Book Award finalist. They are raw, visceral meditations on bodily trauma, survival, and the strange intimacy of medical intervention.

In one standout piece addressed to her surgeon, Ostriker uses fruit metaphors—honeydew, pomegranate, watermelon—to describe the surgical removal of her breast, blending grotesque imagery with tenderness:

“Was I succulent? Was I juicy?”

“I thought you sliced me like green honeydew

Or like a pomegranate full of seeds”

“Doctor, you knifed, chopped, and divided it

Like a watermelon’s ruby flesh”

Ostriker’s dark humor doesn’t dilute the gravity of the poem—it intensifies it. By weaving irony and absurdity into the trauma, she renders it more bearable, more human. Humor becomes a form of resistance, a way to reclaim dignity amid medical violence and existential dread.

The same subtle use of humor shines through in her latest collection, The Holy & Broken Bliss: Poems in Plague Time. It opens with the poem “These Be the Words,” a stark invocation to write what one fears to write. The first stanza sets the tone:

“The words of an old woman shuffling the cards of her own

decline the decline

of her husband the decline of her nation her plague-smitten world.”

Yet amid the sorrow, Ostriker finds humor and grace. In “Plague Time Ritual I,” her husband jokes that he won’t die but will shrink until she can carry him around in a teacup and show him off to her friends. This blend of tenderness and absurdity is Ostriker at her finest—using humor to soften the edges of despair and poetry to illuminate the sacred within.

The Holy & Broken Bliss is a deeply reflective and spiritually resonant collection that grapples with themes of aging, mortality, political unrest, and divine presence—all shaped by the isolation and upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a meditation on how we live, love, and seek meaning in a world that feels perpetually on the brink. This is a collection for anyone who has felt the weight of despair and still searched for light.

Alicia Ostriker lived for many years in Princeton, New Jersey, with her husband Jeremiah Ostriker, a distinguished astrophysicist who taught at Princeton University and recently passed away. Though she now resides in New York City, she continues to cherish New Jersey’s rich poetic tradition—home to voices like William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, and Walt Whitman, as well as herself and many of her former students, whose work and spirit have helped shape the state’s vibrant literary landscape.

As we celebrate our first Mercer County Library System Book Festival, it is a true honor to welcome Alicia Ostriker as our keynote speaker. It feels almost like a homecoming. Her poetry—whether fierce, funny, or tender—has long been a guiding light for readers and writers alike. We look forward to her upcoming poetry reading and book signing of The Holy & Broken Bliss, where her words will once again remind us of the power of language to heal, provoke, and connect.

Sharon Wang, Lawrence HQ Branch