Thanks to all who attended the Frost Place's launch of my fifth poetry collection, Accidental Hymn, on Wednesday, May 25. Copies are available for purchase here!
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Betsy Sholl, former Maine poet laureate, has written about "Mr. Kowalski," one of the poems in the collection:
I love the way the poem opens with [a] dream and then the speaker’s rural life, the inner life, before we are introduced to Mr. Kowalski and the pressures of history. Such a rich combination of physical life, mixed with high art, and the stunning way in which the two merge. The war details are vivid and restrained, allowing us to experience them in a fresh way. The poem asks itself about ambition and fate and choice, but always within the specific situations each section enacts. Nothing is abstract. I experience this poem, in a way I live it.
Read Betsy's full essay here.
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Carl Little, poet and art critic, writes about the collection:
In some collections of contemporary poetry, the book will start off strong, then lose a little staying power as one proceeds, the lesser work stashed toward the end. With Portland poet Dawn Potter’s Accidental Hymn, you can commence on the last page, in the middle, at the beginning—anywhere—and get the impress of her writing, which is consistently brilliant.
Read Carl's full review here.
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Carlene Gadapee, poet and master teacher, has published an in-depth essay about the collection:
Dawn Potter is an empathetic and insightful storyteller of the sorrowing heart. The poems in her newest collection, Accidental Hymn, present communities and characters for our inspection, gently but insistently, and they invite us to look carefully at children, leaf-litter, and the darkness of trees and sometimes of people as well. Nothing is too insignificant for her attentive gaze, and we can see ourselves and the world around us better for this careful attention. Dawn’s speakers are the collective voice of the common person: she captures the hard-working, angry, sad, loving, celebratory voices of the Maine woods and coast, the hills of Appalachia, the house-bound and the homesick, the loved, and the lost. They are also the poet herself, using the persona-voice of a poet/wife/gardener/musician. We travel with her to the past—hers, ours, and an imagined one—and we wander in the half-light of wondering What if? What now? And why? We end up feeling a deep empathy and a kinship with the myriad characters met throughout Accidental Hymn; and this, of course, is no accident.
Read Carlene's full review here.
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