This listing is for the book, candle, poem in a bottle, or set of stones - choose item from drop down & add to cart separately.

Good River by Sara Vander Zwaag $13.95

Paperback, 58 pages

Good River contains poetry that moves through the ebb & flow of heartbreak, healing, growth, & transformation. Each poem is evocative of memory & its impact on the body & spirit through tender language & movement.

Cover image by Caroline O’Connor Thomas

“To enter the night not gilded into a star by / the absence of water and shade / I’ll be okay…(from Good River)”

A SIMPLE LOVE POEM IN A BOTTLE $10

A true message in a bottle, emblem of a deep & tender connection brought to the surface, a symbol of love encapsulated & on journey. Sara Vander Zwaag’s A Simple Love Poem brings forth that energy, articulating & expressing something beyond love, a feeling that is finding tranquility & absolution in a shared space with another. This bottle is a heart joined by two, it’s an apartment, a foundation for something that continues to grow & fill the space.

“You would be the water / in my cup / should I drink, / and you would be / the water standing by / as we float.”

-Sara Vander Zwaag “A Simple Love Poem”

Made with a glass bottle measuring about 3” high, this poetic relic contains Aquamarine chips & a scroll of Sara’s poem, “A Simple Love Poem”. It is sealed with blue wax & adorned with a silver octopus charm & includes an information card with a copy of the poem.

GOOD RIVER SOY WAX CANDLE $16

BY MARVEL + MOON

“Good River is an aquatic plunge off a paint-peeling dock with its musky marine notes. A hint of pine summons up the underbelly of a rowboat—bespeckled in a swaying life of algae, moss, and barnacles. Yet, this scent is as much body as it is sea. Musky notes of patchouli, amber, and vetiver call forth bright, glistening bodies skinny dipping under a euphoric sun.” -Trista at MARVEL + MOON

Scent Notes: Marine. Camphor. Orange. Patchouli. Driftwood. Amber. Vetiver. Eucalyptus. 

Adornments: Purple Dulse Flakes & Sage.

Soy Wax Candle by Marvel + Moon in a 4oz. black matte tin.

“WATERY” HEALING STONES $12

This set comes with three tumbled stones pertaining to the heling energy evoked by Sara’s poetry collection. It includes high quality, ethically sourced* Aquamarine, (super rare) Blue Rose Quartz, & Shiva Lingam stones (measuring between 1-1.5”) in a blue velvet bag with silver tassels & an information card with stone meanings.

*These stones are ethically sourced from small family owned mining businesses who use the pick & ax method to mine the stones, as to not destroy the environment & ecosystem. These businesses do not participate in slave or child labor.

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What others are saying about Vander Zwaag’s Good River:

“This is a stunning debut. There is a startling and exhilarating range of poems, in many forms and styles, all achieved with seemingly effortless, intelligent grace. The world is very much in this book; there’s a great poem about a dresser, and one about psychoanalysis, and an first hilarious poem about skinny dipping where the speaker moves from a comically exaggerated freedom  — “Deep knowing made me/ a wise, naked monk” — to a peculiar and sublime revelation that the objects of the world can themselves provide maternal love. These poems feel true. The knowledge in them feels deep because it did not come easily, and the gratitude of the poet is palpable, intelligent, open: “On a sidewalk in Berkeley, we found/ an enormous, impractical mirror./ The moon that night/ was so huge and reflective/ we thought it might be a god’s/ swollen eye, peering at us/ with immense vulnerability.” This is a brilliant and confident first book, and I look forward to the great poems to come. “

-Matthew Zapruder, author of Father’s Day 

“What is it to be good? The first answer Sara Vander Zwaag offers is that “there [will] not [be] a single lie said.” And so the speakers of these poems expose themselves--to love, to water, to psychoanalysis, wine and sandwiches, skinny-dipping and letters. In these poems, longing is built in lyric and architecture, where lyric is water and the shape it takes is that of a river, exacting “the way a train track is exacting.” As the poems run this course, the current gathers its ontologies and etymologies: Do we all see the same blue? What is rare in us? Between us? Is the soul the same on Klonopin? Has my letter reached you? There is a fatedness to where we are going, one that cannot be fought, so we float through with these speakers as our guide. By wind or by current, we ride that good river--of feeling, heart, and thought.”

-Lisa Hiton, author of Afterfeast  

“Sara Vander Zwaag’s GOOD RIVER is at once a lamentation and a celebration. Both the body and the ordinary become divine in this chapbook in a way that is reminiscent of Olds or Stein. Vader Zwaag masterfully envelopes the reader in rich structures and images, in warm sunlight on cold skin, in an extra glass of sweet wine. The poet writes: “Love will watch our tears and make / quartz from the salt”. There is fire in these poems, and there is loss, and longing, and depth, and decay, but in all of it, there is also discovery and renewal and joy.”

-Kailey Tedesco, author of She Used to be on a Milk Carton, Lizzie, Speak, and FOREVERHAUS 

“A fierce voice governs the language these poems are spoken in. The landscapes are familiar yet we find ourselves in them more passionate, braver, more willing to ravish or be ravished. The details are delicate, the voice is sure. The truth is, Sara Vander Zwaag’s world is built for those who are unafraid: “Euphoria was there/for us, bare as we dared to be.”

-Kazim Ali, author of Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water

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SARA VANDER ZWAAG

Sara loves plants, especially flowers and vegetables. She loves animals, mountains, and bodies of water. She loves her fiancé, Tyler and her cat, Timo. She loves her friends and family. She loves Oakland, California, where she lives. She loves sunshine and drinking kombucha. She loves reading, especially while walking. She loves forests. She loves working as a Health Coach and helping people heal. She loves poetry. Her work has appeared in The White Stag Journal, The Offending Adam, and Volume Poetry. She was the recipient of the 2011 Lannan Poetry Prize as well as a scholarship to the New York Summer Writer’s Program.