Upside Down in the Dark
Carol Potter
“[A] powerfully evocative collection, lit with flashes of grief and humor, and masterful at evoking the way ordinary life crystallizes into something hieratic and profound.”
—Field
"These poems by Carol Potter, about being a woman, a mother, a
lesbian, are remarkably pure and full of energy. Written with love, they seem to imply
that, yes, there is pain, but what a miracle there is for its setting. These poems are a
rare meeting of craft and spontaneity, as if the poet were standing by the flume of a
spillway and shaping the flow with her hands."
—Doug Anderson
"The sense of dislocation—of homelessnes—that is at the
heart of this collection functions, paradoxically, as the source of intimate observation
and recognition of the dramas of 'home' everywhere. Kaleidoscopically, scenes and people,
present and past, near and far, settle into patterns of 'memory crystal,' brightly colored
and particular, yet with few epiphanies or tidy resoultions, suggesting that, with a turn
of the wrist, another equally absorbing arrangement might be achieved. Potter...seeks no
high ground, no safety or ranibow's end, but allows the self to be likewise given and
withdrawn, with poignancy and without fear. That desire pales in these poems before the
irresistible 'what is,' in all its variety and instability, is what intrigues me most
about Upside Down in the Dark"
—Linda McCarriston
about the author
Carol Potter was born and raised in northwestern Connecticut. She
received her B.A. in English/Journalism and her M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst. She currently teaches at Holyoke Community College and lives in
Amherst, Massachusetts with her two daughters.
Carol is the author of Before We Were Born (Alice James
Books,1990) and Upside Down in the Dark (Alice James Books, 1995). Her poems have
appeared in The Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Massachusetts Review,
Sojourner, Field, and others. Her work has also been anthologized in the Anthology
of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry, and in the 1986
Annual Survey of American Poetry. She was the recipient of The Tom AcAfee
Discovery Award from The Missouri Review in 1985 and the 1990 New Letters Award for
Poetry.
Author photo by Jan Freeman
two poems from upside down in the dark
