Notes From A Nomad by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

Notes from a Nomad by Sarah Dickenson Snyder is important poetry. Snyder brings us to the brink of the worst of human nature, a glimpse into the darkness of genocide, “a brief sweep of skin,” in her travels to Rwanda. I’m glad to be with her, in her able hands, for she is open-eyed and awake. Other poems in this collection take us around the world to Machu Picchu, Tibet, Cambodia, finely crafted poetic journeys which will open your eyes.

–Laura Foley, author of Night Ringing

These poems travel quickly around the world, settling first to take in the stories and scenes of Rwanda in an aftermath, “words and dust pushed into unsayable.”  With “a language/of hand-delivered burdens,” they consider “a cracked map of what remains.”  They zoom out to consider the muse, “The wrinkled grayness of remembering” the miracle of grown children in such a world: “We look out the scratched windows—/no one touching.”

–Jill McDonough, Habeas Corpus, Where You Live

Poet Sarah Dickenson Snyder moves between worlds as teacher and traveler—from the crowded streets of Hanoi, to Istanbul, Eleuthera, Machu Picchu, and Rwanda—where a woman sets down a heavy water jug, the scar on her arm “a cracked map of what remains.” Snyder’s carefully observed “earthbound stories” teem with life as her lyrical voice plumbs the “unsayable” words, dust, and the “billion trillion specks of light beyond our reach.”

–Wendy Drexler, Before There Was Before, Western Motel