In Chalice of Tears, her sixth collection of poems, Karin Temple looks to the past, her own past as a "child of war" in 1941 Germany and the cultural history of that era which has affected her. In telling anecdotes and images, she sketches her subsequent physical and spiritual moves towards settling at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. In acknowledging the foundational values in her origins, Temple finds the lasting connections and truths which constitute home for her now, and lead to thoughts of the ultimate end of her journey, "the last and least expected ritual / to come home to." The book closes with "The Holiness of Broken Things," a sequence of meditative poems written to accompany the reliquary sculptures of Astoria artist Charles Schweigert. The sculptures are reproduced with the poems in elegant color photographs.