In winter when rain falls and freezes. The weight of water twisting cedars to the ground. When to move means to break apart. A cedar sheeted in ice when the wind begins. Then stops. Waxwings blinking by the glass berries.

It is just the uselessness of splendor.

It is just the burden of splendor.

It is just the insanity of splendor.

from Three Cruel Tangos

Poetry

Music

Sandra has had a long-time collaboration with Boston-based composer John McDonald. Here are some of the results of that collaboration.

1 Audio Track

2 Audio Track

From the Fall of a Sparrow (score)

Just The Uselessness (score)

Three Crueler Tangos (poem)

Poetry

In Response to a Promotional Ad Claiming That the Number of People Who Have Survived Cancer Could Now Fill the City of Los Angeles (poem)

Post-Op, January Ice Storm (poem)

Dominion of Geese (poem)

Post-Diagnosis

Moving from the intimate space of a cancer patient’s hospital bed to the national sacrifice zones of atomic bomb test sites, Sandra Steingraber’s Post-Diagnosis sets out to find Ground Zero in order to tell “the whole story of what happened.”

The author—a gifted young poet, a survivor of cancer in her twenties, a biologist with an environmental bent committed to cancer activism—writes about hope and renunciation, desire and determination.