a thesaurus for the way water returns is the second poetry chapbook written by Sarah “Sam” Saltiel. Inspired by a move from Chicago to New Mexico, a thesaurus for the way water returns deals with the jarring psychological effects of physical and temporal displacement. The poetry simultaneously disorients and grounds the reader through intense examinations of intimacy and dreamlike descriptions of cognitive dissonance.
With her first poetry book, a long exposure of undoing, set to publish in early 2020, Saltiel focuses on unraveling the nuances of the lived experience — the ugly, the painful, and peaceful. The simple, sparse language, inspired by writers such as Maggie Nelson and Anne Carson, provides an entryway to a tangled emotional core. a thesaurus for the way water returns aims to explore the experience of being irreconcilably detached from your surroundings and wanting nothing more than to broach that distance, giving clarity to the profoundly painful parts of the day-to-day in a way that is legible and understandable to readers, regardless of their background in poetry.
