To receive a signed copy of Wonderwork, email Sandra at sandrarfees@gmail.com. You may also purchase a copy at the link below.
Reviews of Wonderwork
—Kelli Russell Agodon, Dialogues with Rising Tides (Copper Canyon Press)
In Sandra Fees’ compelling collection, Wonderwork, we’re invited to reflect on the wild hope that shapes our lives. In these captivating poems, Fees eloquently explores the spirituality of work and meaning, all while navigating themes of loss, memory, and place. Her lyrical poems bring us to the deeper questions of existence, moving from the uncloaked goddesses of the deepwood to a briefcase of bone to a clusterwink snail. These poems remind us of the power of an engaging voice to draw us in; in Fees’ words, You can fill them with the perfect life, / everything you think you want. // You can hide your suffering there. Wonderwork reminds us that in the midst of darkness and light, joy and struggle, we find our way through.
—Kristina Marie Darling, Fulbright Scholar and author of Daylight Has Already Come (Black Lawrence Press)
To say that Sandra Fees merely weaves together poetry and philosophy would be to greatly underestimate her powers as a poet. While Fees uses style and technique as a point of entry to pressing questions about faith, mortality, and introspection, she is also a master storyteller. Here, the nuances of philosophy and theology are imbued with a startling sense of urgency, dramatic tension, and emotional weight. This book is an achievement, and Fees is clearly a rising star in the literary community.
—John Sibley Williams, Skin Memory (University of Nebraska Press)
This is a rare creation of song and scar, of vulnerability and both emotional and structural complexity. In Sandra Fees’ new collection Wonderwork, the outer and inner, conceptual and human worlds mingle in accessible yet complex ways. Brimming with meditations on faith, family, biology, landscape, and personal identity, these vibrant poems remain grounded in a universal familiarity that opens us up to something greater. If one of the aims of poetry is to condense our vast, contradictory, and beautifully human world into the briefest of songs, Wonderwork, being both intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging, stands as a testament to its possibility.
The Temporary Vase of Hands
To receive a signed copy of The Temporary Vase of Hands, email Sandra at sandrarfees@gmail.com. You may also purchase a copy at the link below.
Reviews of The Temporary Vase
John Taggart, author of Is Music: Selected Poems
Quick eyes, clear eyes, deep eyes. The poems of Sandra Fees co-ordinate (focus) all three in their attention to detail–the look of things in themselves and in motion, in their refusal of sentimental blinkers when confronted by life’s all too real realities, in their compassionate understanding of others who may doubt if there’s much to understand.
Heather H. Thomas, author of Blue Ruby
This vase brims with lyrics imbued with a quiet beauty. Fees offers meditative poems that breathe with rhythmic, empathic inquiry. Her encounters with solitude and communities of others–family, friends, and animals–hold a presence that embraces joy and sorrow attended by wisdom and precision of language.
Moving, Being Moved
out of print
Reviews of Moving, Being Moved
Philip Terman, Our Portion: New and Selected Poems
Sandra Fees, in Moving, Being Moved, is able to integrate a child—like wonder with an adult wisdom in a language that is at once imaginative and musical, a sharp mystical lyricism so natural it reads as if “sprung from her own body.” In the tradition of the great open—verse formal lyricists like Elizabeth Bishop, the poems hint at narrative histories in the remarkable compression of sharply controlled lyrics, whole lives in musical phrases. This is a poetry of mature sensibilities that startle as it sings of imagination and memory, love and loss and longing, often all at once. Indeed, Fees’ words are ‘talismans for the living.’
Maryam Hand, Piercing the Veil
Have you ever watched a skilled weaver working her loom; choosing the colors that will become a beautiful fabric—a piece of art—then deftly moving the loom’s shutter back and forth while the beauty slowly takes shape? Only she can envision the final creation that is to be, or failing that, to allow her hands to be guided by some unseen wisdom. This is the metaphor that comes to mind while reading Moved, Being Moved. Sophisticated, thoughtful and subtle, Fees weaves a beautiful tapestry, fluidly moving between dimensions of consciousness and tantalizing the soul to look beneath the apparent for hidden gems. This is a book to be read and reread.
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