Unforgetting

Aliki Barnstone, Poet Laureate of Missouri

Chris Potter is the master of braiding hawks, jets, and sinks full of Breck suds. Throw in a ghost or two, a memory of what never happened and you have poetry to sustain you with "the truth of such burdens, their unexpected heft." Potter is the poet with "black and white trains" connecting us from The Beatles to Seattle by way of the "stars buzzing above." "Listen to them," Potter implores, "Listen harder." When life taps too hard, Potter's poetry will always get us through to the other side of our own memories.

Sherry O'Keefe, Cracking Geodes Open

Christine Potter's Unforgetting is deeply generous and unfailingly honest. We are given vivid moments that contain the unexpected, cleaning out a car and finding "a paper fan that opens into a pleated circle of cherry blossoms." We find ghosts in houses and metaphorical ghosts of past selves that still inhabit past rooms and relationships. Writing of her mother in the title poem, Potter tells us "The stories flood away from her but still she scoops them to her lips and tells them." I take this as advice, something we all must do with what we struggle to retain. "Please, listen," this collection ultimately reminds us. "No place is really empty. Take this fruit in your hands and offer it. There is something more than just remembering."

Jennifer Finstrom, Poetry Editor, Eclectica