With a Polaroid Camera

poems by

Sarah Dickenson Snyder

ISBN: 978-1-59948-745-8, ~84 pages, $14 (+ shipping)

Release Date:  June 25, 2019

Sarah Dickenson Snyder has written poetry since she knew there was a form with conscious line breaks. She has three poetry collections, The Human Contract, and Notes from a Nomad (both published in 2017). She was selected for the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference both times she applied. One poem was nominated for best of Net in 2017. Recent work has appeared in RHINO and The Sewanee Review.

Sarah Snyder’s With a Polaroid Camera’s elegant attention to “small seconds” give us paths opening to sun glinting on both foxes and diamonds. In these poems we see yaks, Mekong, mystics, Bosphorus, birds, light as hope, and a world in a teacup. Read these poems to get a fresh take on seeing, helping us all to “become //cathedral builders of hope, /of listening, of a country.” ~Jill S. McDonough

In Snyder’s new collection, With a Polaroid Camera, her luminous images—yaks, a young child learning to read, princess telephones, buddhist monks, a son’s peacock tattoo—reveal scenes of sensitivity and brightness; serious, but not earthbound, always reaching toward the light, as in “The Gravity”: Daffodils reach/from darkness/sheathed in green/into air/toward a sun. The extended metaphor of this fine poetry collection serves to connect the poems and bring them, in their fullness, to a well-developed light. ~Laura Foley, The Good Books Poetry Contest, Winner

A family heirloom. A husk of corn. A visiting daughter. A hostel in Rwanda. In With A Polaroid Camera, Sarah Snyder treats us to snapshots of her life that develop, through the music and clarity of her voice, into precise and evocative images that mean more than their outline suggested. With tenderness and rigor, Snyder draws the moments to her—and to us—“taking in each second, each one.” ~Wendy Mnookin, Dinner with Emerson

A Family Tree

Love
with no amending.

How one man
and one woman

or one woman
and one woman

or one man and
one man can start

an avalanche
with a kiss,

a meeting
of new universes

spinning and spinning
into dark matter.

Washing Gods

The time for washing past.
The ring of gold and diamonds
on a hand that knew
the archeology

of a sock or sweater,
the hiss of steam.
Sun framed by the small window—
an engine’s violet flame.

About Hope

.05% chance—
part of that spark.

Signs & slogans—
Praise the Lord—Pass the Ammo!

The doctors nodded,
a positive mind

will help them
deliver poison.

Months of this
and he lived.

How we all become
cathedral builders

of hope, of listening,
of a country

with a light
in each window.

Wanting a Tattoo

On the underside
of my wrist,

veins visible,
skin translucent,

something to be
part of me,

maybe a little book
of victories,

a poem holder,
something

fenced into a mark
to touch and see

even in the dark,
formless unmooring—

when I add
another pillow

under my head
to lift me.