Mothershell

Book excerpt: Think of a mother cupping a child's face in her hands, and you have the shell of Mothershell, Andrea Potos' tender and luminous new collection. Yes, these are poems of loss: her mother's cancer and treatments, her death and the grief that follows, but these are also poems that celebrate the chord, "the unseen thread" that binds mothers and daughters forever. Potos imagines heaven as an eternal breakfast, mother and daughter drinking our coffee/black and filled to the top. Coffee without bitterness or sweet / but somewhere in the perfection / of the middle. Here are poems that celebrate the power of presence, poems of travel: Ireland, France, Italy, ekphrastic poems that illuminate paintings. In "What the Poem Did," Potos writes It became a spine/walked me upright/ into the day, and this is what this book does, walks with each of us and sustains us in the long journey of all of our ordinary days. Barbara Crooker, author of Some Glad Morning, and others In this stunning, new collection by Andrea Potos, we find beautiful windows into the life of abiding love-each poem steeped in elegant imagery and story. A simple moment of sharing eggs over-easy with her mother, or witnessing her daughter's essence igniting in the Italian light, is all we need, to know the deep connection this poet has to others. Potos offers up these poems as prayer and healing. This collection is a love letter to memory, hope, and presence. She brings memories to life so vividly, that we, too, can hear her mother's voice through glittering veins of stone. Gentle in their touch, these beautifully sculpted poems pay tribute to the quiet strength needed for the loss you know is coming and the spaces left behind. Cristina M. R. Norcross, editor of Blue Heron Review; author of Beauty in the Broken Places, Amnesia and Awakenings, and others In Mothershell, Andrea Potos uses light and color and sound as expertly as she did in her recent chapbook, Arrows of Light. In this new collection, visual and tactile arts expand metaphors even further, weaving rich phrases such as all of them spun and still spinning / with filaments of unstoppable light into a glorious, whole cloth that not only honors memories but recreates tangible moments with her mother and other loved ones. Potos explores relationships in deftly conveyed, universal allegories that touch our innermost understanding. As so aptly expressed in "Writing My Mother," Potos does her writing on the top of light, her hands passing / across brightness and slanting shadows. Every bit of light and shadow in Mothershell reflects a gifted writer's heart and mind. C. Ann Kodra, author of Under an Adirondack Moon