But Today Is Different

In But Today Is Different, Sarah Stern's first full-length collection of poems, she explores the themes of loss, desire, the erotic, getting older in a youth-obsessed culture, and finding the mystical in the ordinary. Several poems are shaped by conversations between an enduring voice and a mortal one that asks questions. The answers are in the shared spaces of wonder about the knowable and unknowable. With wisdom, humor, and humility, Stern brings the reader to a new place of deep feeling. Endorsements for But Today Is Different ""Sarah Stern has written an utterly frank, headlong, passionate, and deeply engendered book of a woman in mid-life. She writes out of her own longings, her devotions as a daughter and a mother, her fiery supplications. But Today Is Different may be printed with ink, but it was written with fire."" --Edward Hirsch, author of A Poet's Glossary and Gabriel ""Sarah Stern's first collection of poems, But Today Is Different, is a marvel. Wise, compassionate, erotic, plain-spoken, studded with wonderful moments--a black goat with blue eyes, an aging mother's clavicle 'like a Calder mobile,' an iconic lipstick stain on a coffee cup--Stern's vision puts a shine on the ordinary (a trip to Macy's, a scraped knee) and gives it back to us as something wondrous and new. A new voice, in which readers will hear echoes of Philip Levine and Grace Paley . . . and a real achievement."" --Cynthia Zarin, author of The Ada Poems and An Enlarged Heart: A Personal History. _____________________________________________________________________ Praise for Another Word For Love ""In Another Word for Love, Sarah Stern searches for meaning in a broken world. She delights in things around her, whether the El in New York or trees in New Hampshire, finding in them keys to her inner life. I read this book in the light of her clarity, exactitude, and fine intelligence."" --Grace Schulman, author of Without A Claim ""Vivid and opaque, innocent and sophisticated, Sarah Stern's poems in Another Word for Love are so full of life, never more than when they hint at death, that they refuse to sit still on the page. It's us she's catching in these glimmering nets."" --Karen Durbin, Elle ""Sarah Stern is a poet to watch and relish."" --Jewish Book World Sarah Stern is the author of Another Word for Love. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, recently in The American Dream, The Best of Ducts.org, Epiphany, Freefall, and Verse Daily. She is a four-time winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts' Poetry Award. She graduated from Barnard College and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in New York City and is a senior associate at the EastWest Institute. Visit her at www.sarahstern.me.