Victor Stringer's debut poetry collection, 'Lingering Light: 80 Poems,' published by American Publishers Empire on July 19, 2026, is now available worldwide on Amazon in Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover editions. The collection gathers eighty poems written over roughly twenty years, organized into seven thematic sections that traverse love, loss, childhood, spirituality, identity, and war. Stringer describes the collection not as a single-message book but as a voice that 'keeps chasing the same thing across very different rooms of a life: something true, something that outlasts the moment it was written in.'
The title 'Lingering Light' reflects the book's core theme: some feelings do not resolve neatly. They linger in memory, in the body, and in quiet hours, waiting to be examined. The collection opens with 'Love & Romance,' featuring poems like 'Being With You,' which moves through Central Park, the Eiffel Tower, and a sunset in Montego Bay to capture the feeling of belonging completely to another person. The following section, 'Loss, Heartbreak & Emotional Darkness,' includes 'Two Sides of a Broken Heart,' where a man returns to a beach he once shared with a lost love, holding both halves of a broken heart charm.
Stringer's experiences as a father shine in 'Childhood, Family & Innocence,' with poems built from real questions from his young child, such as 'Daddy, Will You Blow My Chicken,' which includes inquiries like 'Where does the moon hide during the day?' and concerns about ducks that might speak Spanish. The collection then slows with 'Spirituality, Reflection & Inner Peace,' where 'Yogi Time' describes a meditation session in the woods that leads to an encounter with a golden light and a voice saying there is still work to do.
'Journey, Memory & Place' uses landscapes to process emotions, while 'Identity, Existence & Philosophical Questions' asks what a self is beyond the roles of lover, father, soldier, and believer. The most challenging section, 'War, Struggle & Warrior Energy,' draws on Stringer's military service. 'A Young Warrior's Request!' is addressed to politicians who send young people to fight, written from the perspective of a soldier who must live with decisions he did not make. The collection closes with lighter, experimental pieces like 'Irish Dancer' and 'A Pirate's Life for Me,' showing that even a book built on hard-won honesty has room for play.
Victor Stringer is a poet, veteran, and father whose work draws on spiritual searching, military service, romantic love and loss, and raising children. His poetry moves between the confessional and philosophical, using vivid imagery and emotional honesty to explore themes personal in origin and universal in reach. 'Lingering Light' is available on Amazon worldwide, including the US, UK, and Canada. The book is offered in Kindle, Paperback (ISBN: 9781971232577), and Hardcover (ISBN: 9781971232584) formats, with a direct buy link at https://a.co/d/0dZ6e3XN. For more information, visit https://victorstringer.com/.
