About the Book
"The world breaks everyone," said Ernest Hemingway. The poems in Sandy Coomer's collection, The Broken Places, concur and serve as witness to the severity of our world and the challenge to maintain balance and positivity. However, these poems also serve as a call to courage. In acknowledging that hard questions seldom have easy answers, the poet comes to an intimate reckoning with the rest of Hemingway's words, "and afterward, some are stronger at the broken places." Exploring brokenness in the public world, in relationships with others, in the physical body, and in the sacredness of our identity and heart, these poems weave a path of observation and reflection through loss and grief, frustration and anguish, to reach a place where shadows can't control and dictate. In today's world of political and personal strife and challenge, The Broken Places maintains there is much that can be gained from life's hardships: a bolder inner strength, a vivid perception of good, and the fortitude to speak one's truth. Uncovering hope and healing in the mundane as well as the profound moments of life, the poems address the realities of being human, carrying the truth of struggle and pain in the same hands that carry acceptance and forgiveness. Despite the turbulence of our world, the overarching message of this book is one of perseverance and faith, and the belief that the human spirit can rise beyond the broken places to the claim the beautiful spaces that exist for us all.
About the Author :
Sandy Coomer is a poet, artist, Ironman athlete, and social entrepreneur from Nashville, TN. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and she is the author of three poetry chapbooks and a full-length collection, Available Light (Iris Press). She is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and her poem, "Calligraphy" was a 2019 Best of the Net finalist. Sandy is a past poetry mentor in the AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship Program and the founding editor of the online poetry journal Rockvale Review. She is the founder and director of Rockvale Writers' Colony in College Grove, TN, a not-for-profit organization that exists to support and educate writers of all genres and backgrounds. She is a teacher, a dreamer, and an explorer. Her favorite word is "believe."
Review :
Sandy Coomer's second full-length collection of poems is a cataloguing of broken moments within relationships, identity, the body, and the world. She writes, "Is it anyone's fault / this world has teeth?" These poems skip across the human condition like a stone on water, touching relatable and specific moments with vivid imagery: "This is not rare & I am not / a spectacle carrying grief this way, over my shoulder, though it spills / thick & red down my back." From death and mourning to gardens and growth, Coomer gives us poems that reveal, make connections, and remind us we are human.
--Trish Hopkinson, author of Footnote
"If freedom is an illusion, a mirage, a myth, / then this poem is a mirror, a surrender," writes Sandy Coomer in The Broken Places, a collection that acts as both a mirror for our pain points and a surrender to revelations about ways light resides nested in dark, breakdown accompanies breakthrough, and nature's radiance salves. With potent imagery, lyrical lines, and bold suppositions, Coomer traverses coming of age, the tragedy of violence, motherhood, mother loss, and the intrusions of illness to explore redemption. Ekphrastic poems featuring Klimt and Degas and poems using villanelle and mirror line structures round out this unflinching collection.
--Tania Pryputniewicz, author of November Butterfly
Like all visionaries, Sandy Spencer Coomer takes readers with her on a journey from darkness to
light. In the poem "Begonia," the poet writes "You kneel in the drifting shade/ and try to
understand yourself, which means to understand humanity." Sandy Coomer looks clear-eyed at
complex experience-school shootings, racism, sexual misconduct-and doesn't hesitate to
acknowledge that "We are dangerous together." This beautifully orchestrated book gives voice to
humanity's "wildest part" and shows readers how to meet "the hard, blunt face of its blooming."
Finally, these poems offer us the courage to keep faith with ourselves: "No matter what you
think about our chances/let morning find us iridescent and shimmering."
--Katherine Smith, author of Woman Alone on the Mountain
