The Perfect Day

Andrea Potos

Wisconsin poet Andrea Potos speaks in this chapbook from that bittersweet juncture of family life where the generations pass each other, one ending as another is beginning. Beneath the translucent skin of her aged grandparents, we glimpse the lives that have shaped and sheltered the author, even as under her own skin Potos’ unborn child takes compelling form. Potos writes with grace and clarity, enlarging the familiar with fresh perception.

Andrea Potos lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her husband and daughter. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies including: CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Poetry East, Cimarron Review, Prairie Schooner, The MacGuffin, Kalliope, The Sun, Claiming the Spirit Within: A Sourcebook of Women’s Poetry(Beacon Press); I Feel A Little Jumpy Around You (Simon & Schuster);Mothers & Daughters (Harmony Books); and At Our Core: Women Writing About Power (Papier Mache Press). She was awarded first prize in the poetry competition sponsored by So To Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, and is the winner of the 2004 James Hearst Poetry Prize from the North American Review. She was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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Excerpt

In the Heart

The driftless area
is where I want to reside –
land the glaciers did not
grind down, flatten
with the force of deep ice,
leaving only broken
rocks in their wake.
There is the sweeping
dance of valley and hill,
the greatest beauty where loss
has been left to the elements,
sculpting its own natural shape.