Why I Don't Take Xanax

Family history and secrets, creative awakening, marriage, loss, and the daily practice of staying alive in a world that offers both terror and wonder - this is the terrain masterfully navigated by Christine Potter in her collection, Why I Don't Take Xanax(R). These poems move from a sometimes complicated, sometimes magical childhood in suburban New York, through young adulthood's awkwardness, to the fully adult work of caring for aging parents. With equal attention to Bach's cello suites and owls at 2 a.m., pandemic grief, and childhood fireworks, Potter teaches us how to remember and also how to be present. As she writes in "I'll Tell You a Secret" "there's no / such thing as the literal, only the sudden rush / of this creek. Only the smooth, tight fists of the / stones in it, silently remembering everything."

-Richard Jordan, author, The Squannacook at Dawn and Spotting the Rise

In Why I Don't Take Xanax, Christine Potter tracks a life in poems that move from 1960s television glow through the pandemic. These poems sit next to aging parents, listen to owls, acknowledge the bad news, and still manage to laugh with a "long kite-string of joy." Here "Someone is leaving and / someone is coming to the door" and "All / our houses are the same house." Potter seamlessly moves through history and writes with a tenderness and spiritual restlessness, reminding us that even in life's tough times, love and ordinary light can keep us from going under.

-Kelli Russell Agodon, author, Accidental Devotions