What the Pain Left

"We walk together gathering the coming darkness with both hands."

In Sandra Noel's What the Pain Left, the poems crystalize through the lens of grief, each poem sharpened by images, story, and insights. This sounds like a volume of long poems and a thick read, but no. Tightly and sparingly, Noel stitches with a golden thread her poems of clarity and depth. She details her life with her husband from young love's first attraction to their rich shared life with its core of marine science and the sea. His cancer diagnosis interferes with their life's flow. They encounter days of watching for hope in the affront of pain, then nights dealing with death, and finally her days turning toward living. These poems call us to a deeper empathy.

-Ann Spiers, author of Rain Violent (Empty Bowl), Back Cut (Black Heron), and Harpoon (Triple Series # Ravenna). See annspiers.com.

In Sandra Noel's What the Pain Left, we witness the flux and flow of a life passing in clear, forthright language that bares all the complexity of changing weather and temperamental seas. These poems read as vulnerable glimpses into what is a painful and unfathomable journey: the death of a soulmate. As the poems unfold, we witness hints of the poet's continued, independent journey in a life that embraces the natural world which once linked these life partners together in their work and home. A life, like some landscapes, which now "...will never be healed completely but it can be restored enough." Part diary, part love letter, Noel's humor, gratitude, and self-awareness keep these poems honest and truly from the heart.

-Katy E. Ellis, author of Home Water, Home Land