Written over a period of nearly twenty years, the poems in What an Island Knows trace the spiritual journey of a family of summer people on Chebeague Island, Maine. In the Abenaki language, Chebeague means "island of many springs"-literally, freshwater springs that nourish life. So too in this book, the narrator (and reader) discover springs that nourish life in the face of conflict and crisis. Such springs include the joys of family and community, the healing power of wild places, the seasonal rhythms of work and rest, and the balance of action and contemplation. As the narrator wrestles with universal questions of vocation, parenting, illness, and loss-seeking wisdom from nature and the ancestors- What an Island Knows poses questions that hover over the twenty-first century: What are our responsibilities to the land and planet? To indigenous people and future generations? How does the local entwine with the global? How do we age with dignity and grace? Can we reclaim the wonder of childhood? What might nature teach us about how to live, and lean into the future with radical hope? "This gorgeous new book from Alexander Levering Kern stuns with its illumination of both the natural beauty of an island off Maine and the days of a family's summer stays there. We watch as children grow and parents age, each moment savored and beheld with love and a 'certain species of mercy.' . . . Reading these poems feels like the joy of intimacy, of gazing into a human heart always tilting toward true north and the eternal Beloved." -Donna Baier Stein, award-winning author and founder/publisher of Tiferet Journal "Alexander Levering Kern's new collection is celebratory, especially of the miracle of family life, always rendered with a flawless eye for detail. . . . But although Kern is ever grateful for his blessings, what crucially ballasts What an Island Knows is its awareness of those who cannot celebrate, of 'a gasping world, survivors of war, / caravans of children, the widow, the orphan / . . . a lone refugee climbing parched gullies / knocking on our door at night.'" -Sydney Lea, former Poet Laureate of Vermont and Pulitzer Prize finalist "Alexander Levering Kern offers a memoir through place and family . . . The landscape grounds us in wonderful particulars. . . . With his keen eye, Kern notes the way these particulars connect present to past and future; peace to war; growth to decline. . . . But if the poems are always aware of suffering, they return again and again to prayer, hope, and a celebration of the dance of language and time." -Nadia Colburn, PhD, poet and author of I Say the Sky " What an Island Knows is a beautiful love poem to a place-its myths and rhythms, histories and timelessness . . . Alexander Levering Kern leads us home to a gentle silence, until we come close to the Divine and 'rise into (our) own liberation.'" -Deborah Leipziger, poet and author of Story & Bone "Readers are asked, 'If an island could speak, what might it say / and if listening, what might we hear?' The answer . . . after beachcombing every beautifully measured stanza, is wind, saltwater, and poetry . . . Kern taps into a universal truth: Life is a sacred journey." -Gary Rainford, poet, author of Adrift , and editor-in-chief of The Island Reader Alexander Levering Kern is a poet, editor, Quaker educator, university chaplain, and interfaith organizer. His work appears in publications such as Spiritus, About Place Journal, Georgetown Review, Soul-Lit, Spare Change News, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Consequence Online, and in anthologies from Tiferet, Meridian, Pudding House, and Ibbetson Street. He is founding editor of Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts [www.pensivejournal.com] based at Northeastern University, where he also serves as Executive Director of the Center for Spirituality, Dialogue, and Service. Editor of the anthology Becoming Fire: Spiritual Writing from Rising Generations, Kern has served and learned alongside communities around the world, including post-earthquake Haiti; post-apartheid South Africa; northern Nigeria; the Middle East; rural Honduras; Hiroshima; Brazil; Ferguson, Missouri; and the Arizona-Mexico borderlands. His family makes their home in Somerville, Massachusetts, and Chebeague Island, Maine, homelands of the Massachusett, Pawtucket, Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and Wabanaki peoples.