SOURCE: “How the Light Gets In,” in American Book Review, Vol. 18, No. 6, September-October, 1997, pp. 23-4.

In the following excerpt, Dolin delineates the themes and style of The Crack in Everything.

The Crack in Everything, Alicia Ostriker's eighth volume of poetry, is a mature work, filled with wisdom about personal grief and the world. According to the Kabbala, upon the creation of the world, the vessels into which light was poured cracked, and now it is up to human beings to repair the world's brokenness. And though Ostriker knows that she can't fix most things, including herself, she uses her poems to teach us—and herself—that “a crack in everything” is, in words she borrows from Leonard Cohen, “how the light gets in.” Pears, Lake, Sun, Sandy Solomon's first book of poems and the winner of the 1995 Agnes Lynch Starrett Award, also uses brokenness to illumine the harsh...