Exploring the themes of loss, love, hope, and memory, this collection of 40 poems delves into the intricate connection between life and death. It captures the yearning and confusion that accompany painful endings, while also embracing acceptance and gratitude for life's natural cycles. The verses reflect on the intangible nature of grief and tragedy, inviting readers to engage with the profound emotions that reside in the heart's sacred spaces.
Available Light is a poetry collection that illuminates what it means to be human. Balancing themes of doubt with faith, and loss with acceptance, the collection remains fiercely hopeful through the confusion we all share in making sense of this world.
Exploring the theme of brokenness, this poetry collection reflects on the challenges of maintaining positivity in a harsh world. The poems delve into personal and public struggles, addressing loss, grief, and identity while emphasizing the strength that can emerge from hardship. Coomer's work offers a journey through pain towards acceptance and healing, highlighting the resilience of the human spirit. Ultimately, it conveys a message of hope and the belief that beauty can be found even amidst life's difficulties, encouraging readers to embrace their truths and persevere.
Sandy Coomer's, "Rivers Within Us," is a collection of poems that allows readers to reevaluate and question the way in which they move through life on a daily basis. What does it mean to live and die? What should we expect in life? How can dreams come true and, still, we are faced with disappointment? This movement is portrayed in settings that are saturated with images of nature and, in particular, the river; symbolic of the life force that carries us all. Coomer further creates movement and illustrates mastery over her craft through purposeful stanza breaks and rhythmic lines that plunges readers into each poem. Experiences and notions, such as love and synesthesia, become tangible through concrete images derived from nature and abstraction; ants are no longer just ants but are a device to belittle and inspire awe, praise and religion are brought together to create something almost physical, and dreams showcase vulnerabilities we would rather hide but cannot. Notions about life are torn apart and rearranged again through similes and metaphors that become more real than the very thing itself. All of these elements culminate into a collection that tries to make sense of life, death, and love through the swift and crushing movement of our passions that move like a river. Coomer speaks to all of this in just three words, "Rivers Within Us."
