Arranged as a mother’s survival guide to her daughter, For Tamara is a touching and inventive collection of poems about surviving and thriving from the author of The Work of Days.

Ostensibly intended as a document of essential practical and emotional advice, this handbook ultimately acts as a reassuring record of help and of hope. Anticipating her daughter’s needs, from basic necessities and medical care to law and order, literature, science, and family, the mother provides her daughter with the means to persist in the face of adversity, disaster, and the everyday. With profound elegance, humor, and haunting emotion, Sarah Lang reminds us that often the most necessary tool for survival is an affirmation of love at a time of loss. For Tamara confirms the deft touch and delicate power of this striking poet.