Review by Mindy Kronenberg
Unassuming women of fierce literary imaginations can find themselves historically reduced to spinsterhood or a perceived existence of wistful eccentricity, myths that contribute to a legacy of emotional isolation that diminishes their artistic prowess. In Two Emilys Andrea Potos summons the presence (and personal influence) of two iconic writers, who serve as literary spirit-guides—Emily Dickinson and Emily Bronte—inspired by and integrating their creative energies into her everyday life, from youth to seasoned poet.
Both poets, who avoided fame during their lives and were renegades in their own right, float through these pages with an air of mystery yet evidence of their humanity—longing, curiosity, and poignant sorrow–and Potos wonders at the private, separate creative transformations in their respective lives, as in “Two Emilys” (p. 43):
Who can say what happens
to a woman alone in her room,
with sheer white drapes trembling in the air
rushing invisibly over her letters to the world,
or, when she leaves the walls behind her,
desktop propped under her arm,
mastiff sniffing the ground at her side,
the fierce, countenance of the crags,
the wind’s holler making translations in her body.
The adoration of and affection for each Emily sparks a desire to connect through the distance of time, and occurs when finding a keepsake talisman from each poet’s homestead or potential stomping ground. In “A Stone from Emily Bronte,” (p. 16) the discovered item brings poet and subject together in the moment:
On the High Yorkshire Moor
I found it, dark spotted blue and glazed
With start and twilight.
One wind-lashed mile away
from her parsonage home,
I bent down to keep it—
dreamed her gaze my own.
A small gift is also found in Amherst, obtained slyly but gratefully, “Three Acorns from Emily’s Yard,” (p. 20) where a cherished souvenir gives homage to her subject’s poetic prowess:
I pocketed them that day
the tour guide was not looking.
I nodded to myself that she
would not mind for me to hold
in my palm and carry home
such Possibility.
The lingering power of each Emily’s literary legacy is found in both the gossamer and gravity of their narratives, weightless yet grounding, persistent and enchanting. In “To Be Near Emily” (p.24) a friend of Potos who studied at Amherst tells her of the adoring throngs who visit the famous grave, “…pilgrims who come/ leaving scraps of paper, beads and flowers,/ hoping to breathe some rarified air.” Potos muses in “Studio Sessions, Emily Dickinson Museum” (p.31) at the thought of a pricey opportunity to spend restricted time in the poet’s room to summon a residual creativity energy (“Surely some atoms of her being/ still linger,…”). She wonders “…how would it be to live/ in the aftermath of her? Would she guide/ my hand across the modern page?” The magic and mystery of Bronte is roused in moaning winds, restless landscapes, the promise of echo and acolyte on a visit to Bronte’s home. In “To Emily Bronte” (p. 22) Potos declares
…I imagine
I hear your skin
brush mine, whisper what you know:
the silence, the stars
that burn through the page.
Hone the hours to their core—you might have said—
wind and poem, passion and moor.
Two Emilys is as endearing a collection as it is engaging—it devotedly captures the stylistic and emotional essence of its two namesakes, the breathless verse and hunger for self-expression, and shares the excitation that these two distinct and determined voices have stirred in Potos during her own journey as a poet.
Mindy Kronenberg is an award-winning poet and writer with numerous publications world-wide. She teaches at SUNY Empire State University, is the editor of Oberon poetry magazine, and the author of Dismantling the Playground (Birnham Wood), Images of America: Miller Place (Arcadia), and OPEN, an illustrated poetry book (Clare Songbirds Publishers). In 2024 she was named Literature Ambassador by The Long Island Literature & Poetry Repository.
Two Emilys by Andrea Potos
Kelsay Books, 2025
Paper, 48 pages
ISBN 9781639806874