Sandra Kohler’s The Ceremonies of Longing, winner of the AWP Award Series in Poetry, was published in 2003 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. A previous collection, The Country of Women, was published by Calyx in 1995. Kohler’s poems have appeared in The New Republic, Prairie Schooner, The Gettysburg Review, The Colorado Review, and elsewhere. After living in Pennsylvania for most of her adult life, she has recently moved to Boston, Massachusetts.

Other poems by Sandra Kohler in Verse Daily:
April 26, 2011:   "Summons" "Surprise always, the day wakes us, the dream..."
February 12, 2009:   "Bookends" "Walking along the river after a month’s..."
May 21, 2008:   "What is Coming" "What is is coming. Light behind light, presence..."
May 29, 2005:  "Rhapsody" ""Sunday morning on the porch. Thick moist summer...."
January 11, 2004:  "Litany" "Rain this morning is the glazed blue..."
November 3, 2003:  "After Arcadia" "On the cusp of the nineteenth century, romantic..."
August 24, 2002:  "The New Years" "Mottled March. The sky patched...."

Books by Sandra Kohler:

Other poems on the web by Sandra Kohler:
Three poems
"May, After Norway"
Six poems
"Giving Blood"

About Improbable Music:

"Sandra Kohler’s Improbable Music illuminates the dark tapestry of grief: moving from our comfortable gardens to all that is lost in war, this book is an improbable music indeed. It is a sound that leads us back to our lives. All we must do is listen."
—Dana Curtis

"In these unflinching, measured poems, Kohler’s concerns range from personal and familial discord to the specter of atrocity. Their insights are hard-won, sometimes from dreams, sometimes from modulated lyric thought. Their consolations, often from the natural world, are vivid and unsentimental and therefore vital—white dogwood blossoms ‘with flecks the color of blood.’"
—Greg Glazner

"‘Everything simple isn’t,’ says Sandra Kohler in this striking third collection. The book starts with the wife of an Episcopal priest lecturing in her under garments and ends with, ‘I’m perfectly happy.’ In between, Kohler bravely contemplates what we’d like to deny: death and decline, loneliness, loss, lies, war, violence, and the numerous ways we fail our beloveds and strangers alike. I love her refusals of anything false, platitudes or despair. With the help of Heraclitus, a heron and prophet of change, she has deftly crafted poems of great empathy and emotional grace. And she delivers joy, despite every true and brutal sorrow she reveals!"
—Julia Kasdorf