I’m happy to welcome Wisconsin poet Andrea Potos back today to answer a few questions about her latest book, Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press, 2022).
Just as Keats once wrote, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,” Andreawrites, “nothing of beauty is ever wasted.”
Embracing beauty and choosing joy, even in the face of loss and despair, are prevailing themes. Safe to say, each fully realized lyrical gem in this collection is a thing of beauty. Andrea’s prologue:
GatheringAs you begin, look just slant,
the same way one should not look directly
into the sun's gaze.
Graze with your consciousness,
keeping your hands nimble, your reach a fluency
of light as words begin to sift
and fall and settle where they
know they belong.
A thread of female kinship and connection is woven throughout the book, whether familial (grandmother, mother, daughter), or literary (Dickinson, Alcott, Brontës, Dorothy Wordsworth). Loved ones deeply missed as well as writers who came before inhabit introspective “rooms of thought,” informing Andrea’s poetic sensibility, igniting her imagination.
As a sentient witness of life’s ordinary miracles, she finds magic in an iridescent soap bubble and revels in freshly washed laundry flapping on the line (“releasing their music of fabric to the air”). She experiences unexpected epiphanies as peonies bloom and a lone cardinal sings of her late mother’s loving divinity.
Intimate and accessible, these poems quietly resonate. Are you turning into your mother? Remember the thrill of new patent leather Mary Janes or the heyday of Laura Ashley dresses? Like prayer, attentiveness, and humility, taking joy is a practice worth cultivating. Moreover, poetry heals, gently guiding us on the path towards wholeness.
Here’s the lovely opening poem:
Andrea’s daughter Lexi
ABUNDANCE TO SHARE WITH THE BIRDS
Another early morning
in front of the bathroom mirror --
my daughter making faces
at herself while I pull
back her long brown hair,
gathering the breadth and shine
in my hands, brushing
and smoothing before weaving
the braid she will wear
to school for the day.
Afterward, stray strands
nestle in the brush, and because
nothing of beauty is ever wasted,
I pull them out,
stand on the porch and let them fly.
Let’s take a peek at the first two titles in the new Illustrated Poets Collection just released in August by Bushel & Peck Books.
Both The Illustrated Emily Dickinson and The Illustrated Robert Frost were edited by poet and educator Ryan G. Van Cleave, Creative Writing Coordinator at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida.
They each contain “25 Essential Poems” paired with David Miles’s gorgeous full color collages (he had me at those beautiful eye-catching covers). 🙂
~ from The Illustrated Robert Frost
In his welcoming series introduction, Van Cleave offers friendly suggestions for making the most of the books. He encourages readers to simply “enjoy the poems” rather than puzzle over the poet’s intentions or dwell on other people’s interpretations.
Next, it’s good to engage with the poems by asking questions such as:
What do you notice about this poem?
How does this poem make you feel?
What else have you read/seen/experienced that connects with this poem?
Finally, it’s important to “be your own boss” – read the poems in order or jump around as one sees fit. Share them with others or savor them by yourself. Read them aloud or “whisper their words in your heart.”
~ from The Illustrated Robert Frost
Ultimately, “there is NO wrong way to experience a poem.” This reminds me of Lee Bennett Hopkins saying that a poem is meant to be experienced rather than analyzed, and I think this goes a long way in making poetry less intimidating for the average reader.
IN PRAISE OF DREAMS
by Wislawa Szymborska
In my dreams
I paint like Vermeer van Delft.
I speak fluent Greek
and not just with the living.
I drive a car
that does what I want it to.
I am gifted
and write mighty epics.
I hear voices
as clearly as any venerable saint.
My brilliance as a pianist
would stun you.
I fly the way we ought to,
i.e., on my own.
Falling from the roof,
I tumble gently to the grass.
I've got no problem
breathing under water.
I can't complain:
I've been able to locate Atlantis.
It's gratifying that I can always
wake up before dying.
As soon as war breaks out,
I roll over on my other side.
I'm a child of my age,
but I don't have to be.
A few years ago
I saw two suns.
And the night before last a penguin,
clear as day.
~ from Poems: New and Collected, 1957-1997, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh (Ecco, 2000).
“Dreaming Girl” by Gilly Marklew.
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Dreams, whether fleeting daydreams, wish fulfillment night dreams, or long held desires — are important indicators of who we are, what we value, and sometimes they serve to motivate us to achieve certain life goals.
They’re also a fun way to consider the subconscious, unleash the imagination and verbalize the unbelievable.
Szymborska’s poem inspired California poet Gary Soto to write about his own dreams.
“Restraint 2 Cowboys Roping a Steer” by Don Langeneckert
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Szymborska seems to value artistic mastery as well as superhuman powers like flying and breathing under water, enabling her to face adversity, survive catastrophes and achieve a kind of immortality. She’s more philosophical and symbolic than Soto.
I like how Soto injects humor and a fond memory in his poem. His voice is conversational and accessible. Who can resist, “licking my fingertips,” the “snap judgement” of the alligator, or those “dolphins/Sitting in lawn chairs”? 🙂
Both express gratitude for their lives in lovely, distinctive ways.
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Of course I couldn’t help but think about my own dreams. Not only fun, but empowering. Fantasy makes life more bearable. Part of me says “impossible,” while the other part says, “why not?” Doesn’t writing make it so? 🙂
~ Maira Kalman (What Pete Ate from A-Z, 2003)
IN MY DREAMS
Sam Heughan begs invites me to live with him in Scotland.
I teleport myself to England at whim and the weather is always good.
I own Harrods.
The real Paddington Brown lives with us.
I am fluent in at least 10 different languages.
I live at the Plaza Hotel and join Eloise for tea in the Palm Court every week.
I bake the biggest, most delicious pie the world has ever seen and the people who eat it are deliriously happy for the rest of their lives.
My house cleans itself.
I inherit Maira Kalman’s inimitable talent.
Colin Firth and Paul McCartney have me on speed dial.
My singing is simply divine and I look good in hats.
I can leap tall buildings in a single bound – with my eyes closed.
I win a tango championship in Argentina with Robert Duvall.
Jackson Browne is a neighbor and whenever I pop over he sings for me.
Whenever I read a good book, I can step right into it and become any character I choose.
When Shakespeare, the Brontës, Louisa May Alcott, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Michael Bond visit the Cornelius Rattigan Tea Room, we assure them they will be read and loved forever and ever.
I see my parents again.
There is no such thing as hate.
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Speaking of Vermeer:
Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth in “Girl With a Pearl Earring” (2003).
What do you dream of?
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The lovely and talented Catherine Flynn is hosting the Roundup at Reading to the Core. Bounce over to check out the full menu of poetic goodness being served up around the blogosphere this week. Happy December!
Imagine spending a stimulating Saturday evening visiting Gertrude Stein’s famous Paris salon at 27 rue de Fleurus. You’d wile away the hours hobnobbing with the likes of Picasso, Hemingway, Matisse, Fitzgerald, and other artistes et écrivains d’avant-garde célèbre.
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas with Matisse, Hemingway, and Picasso (Brett Kaufman/bkbiography)
Alice B. Toklas might serve her famous Mushroom Sandwiches with Clear Turtle Soup, a lovely Violet Soufflé, and A Fine Fat Pullet, followed by a Tender Tart or even Custard Josephine Baker (what, you were hoping for Haschich Fudge?). 🙂
Wisconsin poet Andrea Potos revels in a similar scenario with her whimsical poem, “Imagining Heaven,” just one of the many finely crafted gems from her latest poetry collection, Marrow of Summer (Kelsay Books, 2021).
In some ways a companion to Mothershell (Kelsay Books, 2019),where Andrea lovingly distills fond memories of her mother Penny, Marrow of Summer is written “For all the beloveds, gone on,” honoring not only Penny, but her grandmother, father, and lost friends.
With intuitive insight, Andrea captures small revelatory moments, where gratitude, joy and hope eclipse the weight of loss and longing. It could be the whirring of hummingbird’s wings, the somber sound of the cello, or the startling flame of cardinal feathers: she is always fully present to wonder and willing to embrace the miraculous.
John Keats portrait by Joseph Severn (1821-23)
A fascinating aspect of Andrea’s work is how she cultivates a romantic, ever blossoming interior landscape — fertile ground where art, music, history, travel, and literature happily commingle to inform her poetic process. Her affinity for John Keats, the Brontës, Emily Dickinson and Renoir makes it easy to picture her thriving in a century gone by.
19th century colorized engraving of Charlotte Brontë by William Jackman
I thought it would be fun to share several poems from Marrow of Summer that speak to her writing and the beloved creatives who inspire her. I thank Andrea for sharing a little backstory for each poem along with personal photos. I must admit, her idea of heaven is pretty close to mine. 🙂
“It is interesting to note that poetry, a literary device whose very construct involves the use of words, is itself the word of choice by persons grasping to describe something so beautiful it is marvelously ineffable.” ~ Vanna Bonta
Detail from a reproduction of the Fresco of the Procession, Palace of Knossos, Crete.
We sometimes hear people say, “words fail me.” Have you ever been stymied trying to write about something you care deeply about, frustrated that everything you come up with falls short?
Whether grief, elation, bafflement, or love — we often fall victim to cliché or manage a fair approximation at best.
In this poem, Jack Gilbert suggests that love — the most intense and wide ranging emotion human beings are capable of experiencing — might be the most challenging to describe in words. It’s ironic how Gilbert acknowledges the imperfection of language with a poem that is perfection in itself. 🙂
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Phaistos Disc, Side A (it’s just under 6″ in diameter).
THE FORGOTTEN DIALECT OF THE HEART by Jack Gilbert
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient tongue
has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind’s labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not a language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.
Pittsburgh native Jack Gilbert once described himself as a “serious romantic.” Born four days after Valentine’s Day in 1925, he flunked out of high school but was admitted to the University of Pittsburgh due to a clerical error (yes, really!).
After his first book of poetry, Views of Jeopardy (1962), won the Yale Young Poets Prize and was nominated for a Pulitzer, he became quite the literary and media darling. He did not embrace this role, however, and for most of his life went into self-imposed exile, eschewing fame and traveling around Europe where he sometimes taught American Literature for the U.S. State Department. He would not publish another collection of poetry for twenty years.
Many of his poems are about love and his relationships with specific women. The “Michiko” in “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart” is the sculptor Michiko Nogami, a former student 21 years his junior, with whom he lived in Japan until she died from cancer at age 36.
The cultural references in the poem, especially the “spiral Minoan script,” reflects Gilbert’s time living in Greece and brought back fond memories of my visits there. The Phaistos Disc in the photos is one of the greatest archaeological mysteries of all time. At least 4,000 years old, it was discovered by an Italian archaeologist in 1908, and people have been trying to decipher its mysterious code ever since.
Recently, after working together for six years, Dr. Gareth Owen (linguist researcher with the Technological Educational Institute of Crete) and John Coleman (phonetics professor at Oxford), figured out what the mysterious language sounded like and what some of it means. Reading in a spiral direction from the outside to the inside, they’ve concluded it’s a prayer to a Minoan goddess.
Minoan White Goddess
Because the inscriptions were made by pressing hieroglyphic “seals” into soft clay, producing a text with reusable characters, the Phaistos Disc is considered by some to be a very early example of “movable type printing.” Fascinating!
Jack Gilbert, who published five volumes of poetry, died at age 87 in 2012 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. I love the idea of dreaming about “lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.” And I am grateful to poets for inventing their own “lost vocabularies,” giving voice to our deepest yearnings.
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Enjoy this reading of the poem by Tom O’Bedlam:
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“Cupid in a Landscape by Il Sodoma (1510)
How will you express your love this Valentine’s Day?
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🎈 CAN I TOUCH YOUR HAIR? GIVEAWAY WINNER! 🎈
Thanks to everyone who left comments last week. We are pleased to announce that the lucky person receiving a copy of CAN I TOUCH YOUR HAIR? by Irene Latham and Charles Waters is:
🌺 GAYLE!! 🌸
Congratulations!! Please send along your snail mail address to receive your book.
Next giveaway: Anne of Green Gables Cookbook on Tuesday, February 13!
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The talented and clever Sally Murphy is hosting the Roundup this week. Take a trip down under to check out the full menu of poetic goodness being shared in the blogosphere. Have a good weekend. 🙂
The talented and clever 
Jama's Alphabet Soup 