The Same River Twice
by Lauren CoodleyContact Author for Purchase
Lauren Coodley’s The Same River Twice honors the people and places that have shaped her life. This book is her first collection of poetry--a memoir in verse that begins with her earliest recollections and moves all the way into the present.
In the midst of great change and sudden disasters, as bulldozers ravage the orchards of Napa and old friends die, Lauren Coodley writes of the stubborn determination of ordinary women to lead lives of beauty and meaning in passionate, lyrical poems of mourning, courage, persistence, survival, and celebration.
—Mary Mackey, poet and novelist, author of Sugar Zone
. . . I read a little at a time, savoring bright epiphanies. Lauren Coodley has a fine sense of rhythm and timing, but more importantly she has a sense of moments passing, flashbulbs of joy, of sorrow and of shame. She draws the reader into the work, letting them squeeze the grape of each line and savor the "sweet juice to wash the dirt down.”
—Kevin Fisher-Paulson, columnist, San Francisco Chronicle; author of A Song for Lost Angels
Her compassion for people, acute powers of observation, and fine sensibility to the power of words and metaphor all contribute to this new collection. Her poems powerfully sculpt her life the way she once tried to sculpt her body with all its “hungers” (“Body Sculpture”) and reflect the wisdom she has gained through women mentors, friendships, solitude, and growing sense of mortality. Coodley’s collection sings: read it and enjoy!
—Judy Wells, poet, Everything Irish, Call Home, and The Glass Ship
Published by: Sugartown Publishing, 2018