Poets and Poems: Andrea Potos and “The Presence of One Word”

When I was a child, my favorite annual activity was to spend a week, sometimes two, being spoiled by my paternal grandmother. She lived in Shreveport, some 325 miles from my home in New Orleans, and part of the thrill of that week was to travel there or back on an airplane by myself. Another kind of thrill was accompanying her as she drove around town in her 1940 Ford, which inevitably broke down somewhere where you wish it hadn’t. 

“Stay in the car with the window cracked,” she’d say, as I watched her go knocking on doors until she found a telephone she could use. We’d wait until rescued by a cousin or one of my uncles-in-law. Once we rode in a tow truck.

 

Perhaps my most vivid memory is Saturday afternoons, when she would sit in her rocker and prepare her Sunday School lesson for the next day. She had a small black-leather binder, where she would write out her lesson in unbelievably small script. She taught a ladies Sunday School class well into her 80s; sometimes she’s also practice her singing or piano solo for the worship service. She was self-taught in music; she couldn’t read a single note.

 

Those scenes with my grandmother, inevitably rose-colored by time and memory, came to mind as I read The Presence of One Word: Poems by Andrea Potos. I’d enjoyed her previous poetry collection, Two Emilys, and was looking forward to this new one. What I didn’t expect was to be taken on a journey into my own childhood.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Remembering the past – Padraig O Tuama at Poetry Unbound.

 

Your Work Can Outlive You – Spencer Klavan at The Free Press.

 

Bread and Roses – poem by James Oppenheim at Every Day Poems.

 

“The Village Blacksmith,” poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

A Sonnet Sampler – New Verse Review.

 

Poets and Poems: Andrea Potos and “Two Emilys”

Emily Bronte (1818-1848) and Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) had more in common than their first names. Bronte published her classic Wuthering Heights under the pen name of Ellis Acton; Dickinson was little known, publishing only one letter and only 10 poems in her lifetime. Both became famous under their own names after they died. They lived in a time when women writers were not freely published.  

Poet Andrea Potos knows the work of both writers, and in her new poetry collections, Two Emilys, she pays tribute to them. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Sherborne Missal Chaffinch – poem by Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

“The Maldive Shark,” poem by Herman Melville – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Kingdom of Tales – poem by Selah Cross at Story Warren.

 

Italy’s sunken city returning from the sea – Eva Sandoval at BBC.

 

The enduring brilliance of C.S. Lewis – Alexander Larman at The Spectator.

Poets and Poems: Andrea Potos and "Her Joy Becomes"

You reach an age when you discover that, no matter how hard you’ve tried not to, you’ve become more like your parents than you thought possible. And you wonder how that happens. 

Poet Andrea Potos, in her new collection Her Joy Becomes, writes about her own mother – aging, becoming ill, not there any longer. The loss leaves a gap, until she catches herself doing the things her mother did, or is surprised by that familiar facial expression, or a memory surfaces. And she realizes that her mother hasn’t really left her after all. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Andrea Potos and "Marrow of Summer"

It’s somewhat obvious to say that a poet writes with precision, defined as a carefully chosen word that delivers exactly the meaning the poet intends.  But rarely have I read a collection of poems in which the poet’s precision in constant in poem after poem as Marrow of Summer by Andrea Potos. In this latest collection, Potos has written 52 generally short poems, many of them about relationships – and her precision packs a wallop.  

Perhaps it is the brevity of each poem – very few longer than 15 lines – that requires succinct and precise words. One thinks of Emily Dickinson often while reading these poems, and, in fact, two of them cites Dickinson. But Potos also cites her inspiration as John Keats. One poem is about the poet (“Conversing with Keats”) welcoming her to the house in which he lived in Camden, London near Hampstead Heath. If you’ve been there, or even seen photos of the house, her poem becomes a piece of visual reality.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.