[11/01/25] Wallen, Sarah: Same Day

Same Day consists of poems about time and discovery/re-discovery. Written mostly in the winter of 2021, this collection comes from a place of urgency that emerges from a sustained and desperate need to organize the chaos of experience through language. Through this cataloguing of touch, thought, response and action, the author shares an intimate portrait of the workings of her internal clock.

Sarah Anne Wallen lives in Brooklyn, NY. Poems by Sarah have lately appeared in Hurricane Review, Brooklyn Rail, The Best American Poetry 2023, and Long News. She publishes small, infrequent runs of poetry books as Third Floor Apartment Press. Her books include Don’t Drink Poison (United Artists) and The Craft.

PRAISE

"I’ve been reading Same Day over and over for the last three months and I cannot stop. It captures the internal corporeal gossip of a watchful mind clocking the small details and making them matter most. In “Days of the Week” we get one thought per day (Thursday I find three free books/ Friday I get paid and order delivery) for 31 days; a record of what it’s like to be a writer just trying to do the work. Wallen shows us the bits of skin and hair in the sink—signs of life clipped off—and celebrates when things actually work, like the key to her door. It's stupid-funny at times (when you’re a dog/ your mouth/ is your hand), with easter egg lines from Lady Lazarus and the emcee of Cabaret crooning about the world’s apathy in the face of fascism. This is a book about survival." —Amy Matterer

Praise for Previous Work

"Wallen crafts a punk female poetics located in the weird slippery surface of tone. Compressed, smart and raucous, the poems shimmer as they turn language back on its strange self." —Karen Weiser

"Wallen finds the music of uneven experience, erasing the false hierarchy between 'song' and 'speech' with poetry that speaks/sings, harshly, beautifully, from the page." —Marcella Durand