The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Jacklyn Potter
In Memoriam
Jacklyn Wayne Potter
October 19, 1943 –
April 10, 2006
What I
don't
like about poems
is
the voice,
full of feathers and light
pretending
to
know
what
it does not
know.
(from "To The Neurosurgeon" by Jacklyn Potter)
For those of us who make our home here in the Washington, D.C., literary community, it is disorienting to realize, in this spring of 2010, that our beloved friend, Jacklyn Potter—poet, teacher, dynamo, nurturer of poets young and old, dramatic presence in our lives—died suddenly four years ago.
Jacklyn was well known in Washington as, among many other
things, the director of the Miller Cabin Poetry Series held each week in June
and July—at the cabin Joaquin Miller built for himself in 1883—in Rock Creek
Park, from 1984 until her death. She feted the poets with appreciative
and memorable introductions and a reception at her nearby home on Kennedy
Street, NW, just off 16th Street. In her introduction to the anthology
she edited with Dwaine Rieves and Gary Stein, Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin
Miller's Cabin, 1984-2001, she described the scene:
Reading poetry under the stars, in
the woods, has called for certain arrangements. Necessary gear includes water for the poets, insect
repellent for all, a portable table for materials, and plenty of series flyers
(designed by Janice Olson). For
audience seating we created a small amphitheatre [after the series outgrew the
cabin itself], with the essential help of audience muscle-power, lugging
several large picnic tables and locating them in a rough semicircle next to the
Cabin. They faced tall trees, Rock
Creek and the poets. For reserved
seats, audience members would need to bring their own folding chairs or picnic
blankets.
She closed in typical fashion:
May the poetry in this anthology
give you peace and pleasure. If
you've been to Joaquin Miller's Cabin to hear the poets, may the memories
return. Join the poets now, under
the stars. It's the right
place! It's the right time!
Toujours le mot,
Jacklyn W. Potter
Director
The poet Peter Klappert remembered the readings this way:
For more than a quarter century,
poetry readings at the Miller Cabin have been a joyous way to spend a summer
evening, capped by a celebration (read: party) at Jacklyn Potter's home. Jacklyn and her co-editors have
captured—but not contained!—that eclectic energy in a lively gathering of
poets. This is the kind of cabin
fever that makes you want to stay home and read poems, the kind of fever that
sends you down to Joaquin Miller's cabin to hear poetry take to the air.
I met Jacklyn around 1999 at an American University MFA alumni reading where, in my metaphorical book, she stole the show with her fish poems. My first impression was of an impossibly cute, little big woman—who, if on tiptoe, might have reached five feet—with an incongruously, and charmingly, husky voice. Jacklyn was all energy and commitment. Animated by a life force of gargantuan proportions, she knew her own mind, her opinions many and vigorously expressed. She was, at the same time, generous in her appreciation of others. I well remember conversations with her about this poet or that poem and her emphatic and melodious rejoinder to opinions she found congenial: "I agree!"
Jacklyn was an original, a star. She'd been brought up that way, as her father ferried her, when a small girl, from stage to auditorium to TV or radio studio, where she would sing into a lowered microphone, then accept the crowd's acclaim. Like Shirley Temple, at least for a time, she thought this was the way all little girls spent their days. A few of her poems arise from that experience:
STAR
You said sing, Daddy.
And I sang with melodies
Let's hear some songs,
You said sing, Daddy,
Perfect and best
You said sing.
Daddy, I am singing.
AFTER THE CLOSING SHOW
In the lobby
people kept their distance
watching you with awe
Off stage you’re even more
present but who wants you real
They didn't dare approach you
and left you standing
in impenetrable space
Now I see you
white and scarred
like the ghost of a hare
with your face so frightened
with your hands so naked
and raw
Some years ago, Jacklyn was diagnosed with an
"inoperable" brain tumor.
She battled the symptoms and the judgment that nothing could be done, found
a skilled and willing surgeon, underwent three surgeries, lost of much of her sight, suffered a
series of setbacks, but never stopped enlivening the many who loved her or living herself or writing, including a poem for
her neurosurgeon: TO THE
NEUROSURGEON
for A.K. Ommaya
What I don't
like about poems
is the voice,
full of feathers and light
pretending to
know
what it does not
know.
My voice comes
now
to your hand.
You tell me you
know more
about me than I
think.
Soon you'll
touch
what I can't
see. Silent,
it grows and
hangs
beneath the
lobes
at the inner
crossroads
of my eyes. Have you seen
a blur of birds,
thrilled
by their
progress to the wire?
With startled
landings
they seek a
balanced air.
They bend and
flap and turn their heads
until they can
hold
still enough to
see
still enough to
fly.
PERMANENT VISION
for Marchant
This year, before the lightning of the fly sparked the trees,
before the night train crawled across these eyes
with its headlights scattered through the heavens
and on earth, black leaves filled our kaleidoscopic garden;
before the air turned into this ball of fire, I remember you held this elbow (birdsong riddled the sky)
and you steadied my waist (I had already turned and broken the soil for seed).
You cut the plastic name from my wrist. And lifted me
oh softly into the foaming water to wash me clean.
Four documents can be downloaded here:
Memorial Service program, May 20, 2006, St. Albans Chapel, Washington, D.C.
Eulogy by Marchant Wentworth
"The Groaning Bed," Jacklyn's unpublished manuscript of poems, written for her MFA in 1983
More poems by Jacklyn Potter: JOB DESCRIPTION
Work. Smooth your amber hair across your ear. Work. Smooth your painted nails over IBM keys. Smooth your eyes over a man and his work. Disguise your flesh, but not too well. Smooth the nerves of the man whose coat you hang and let your skin speak enough. He calls then for coffee, he dictates your work. His thighs unclench on soft leather. a smaller smile than yours. He has a wife who later smiles at him, a smaller smile than yours.
A WOMAN'S CHOICE
The black coat.
It's the key to fashion.
She wants it. The one with the collar that won't quit, the mid-calf, pure wool black coat—the limit, the essence, half-price, the black coat. She wants it.
She tries it: the perfect coat. She is particular, precise, she is the woman in the black coat. See her lie in iridescent foam! Soft wool rides the waves.
But now she gives it back to the rack.
As she watches the boats that go for clams and scallops, the wind slaps her, the wind that wears kid gloves. She has consumed many heads of lettuce, she has picked at many bones of fish.
Each day she repeats a thousand motions, she gathers her heart and body at last, home, at peace with her solitary choosing. The seagulls wing before her window screen. She wears her skin alone to bed.
HOSTAGE
I remember my mother's hair rolled in rags as she slipped from room to room her right arm crooked before her. Sometimes she carried a rattling glass of iced tea and a feather duster. Her face had already found the habit of searching corners warily for what she'd lost.
My home was World War II temporary quarters. The first roads I traveled were grit dull, tight and steamy, not like the colored veins of the road map beside me now in the passenger seat. I will not be like her.
But I sleep in wadded, sweaty sheets. My dog near me, I let him fill the bed with burrs and dog hair. In the morning, the road fills with honeysuckle mist curling through loblolly pines.
For my mother, a dream for herself was forbidden. She did not find this out. She ironed dresses for my song-and-dance routine as soldiers practiced maneuvers out back in the Belvoir Woods. She tied bows around my French braids and taught me to say "sophisticated" while the troops marched by singing and shouting Sound off!
MR. OZ
The man she would marry
sat on a rock and smiled
at the sea in particular.
He told her he like her red shoes.
''Very nice shoes . . . a little bit wild . . . .''
Then he shifted his view.
The breeze lifted strands
of his coal-dark hair
in an indulgent, lover-like way.
He looked down and touched the rock
he was sitting on
as if each crevice was his bride.
The waves rolled in.
''This is an empty rock,'' he said
and he smiled.
RETURN TO THE GALLERY
(to
Mary Cassatt's ''Child in the Straw Hat'')
For seven years I wandered
through a planetary bower.
The straw brim of your hat
circling toward me
brought me home.
Here in the city of winter flowers
your breath, rich as pomegranate seeds,
hardens into pigment.
I cannot speak. You cannot see.
A blind man's cane strikes the years
in sidewalk cracks beside the avenue.
SALT BLOCK
Mother I speak in your shadow
I see your glare beneath a wet cobweb of lashes.
I watch your tears turn in the circles
of your swollen eyes.
I am arched,
my body, string and bow
launching good will your way.
You despair in it.
Good will rots your martyrdom.
I come to cut the chains you've made
and watch them crumble
at my least touch.
You remain locked in.
Mother, you make death
play overtime.
I call you, more than once,
mother, salt of the earth;
I know the brine of your kiss.
That shrug of lost hope toward me
pushes me away.
I am the good daughter,
giver of gifts, giver of every conceivable jewel:
rubies, emeralds, pearls of touches
silver smiles, rings of arms
endlessly slipping around you
holding you from yourself.
Mother, I speak in the shadow
of your tongue. With your silence of words
I spin an empty web.
Some day
I will put you carefully away
in the box and I will strike
Pandora's name
from its lid.
SO LONG
after Else Lasker-Schuler
You never come with the morning—
it's your time of day.
I sit with my pillow of stars.
Among the tea roses, there is no more
tea in their luscious cups.
I color your sky with my red pen's
heart, remembering your words.
There is a knocking at my door—
It is my own heart
among the fronds. The terrible glow
of roses burns out in the sky's grey.
You never come with the morning—
I do not hear your footstep.
Oh, those golden earrings.
TWO VIEWPOINTS ''POST BALZAC'' 1991, JUDITH SHEA
1
The coat was to greet
you, not hanging so much as standing
in the garden's stone vestibule.
It is impervious to sleet,
rain, morning dew. Balzac missing,
the regal coat stands for
immortality, or the illusion.
2
It's empty you say, a notched lapel,
collar up, braced for a modern cold century.
Time is crossed with a double X
at the sculpture's base. It's ready
for the dissonance of Gustav Mahler's
second symphony. The bronze, a chilly
structure, that can't outplay the Dictator's brass.
1
Ah! Under Rodin's hands, the monumental robe
hid Balzac's potbelly. Shea’s coat
covers nothing, unsentimental as a tour
of Auschwitz. It's too large for Columbo.
But it stands, holding its own space.
It waits to hold the artist larger than time.
THE
GIFT
He arrived at
evening with pink gladioli.
Stems clustered in
his hand,
the stalks curved
upward
a bright cobra
spreading
through his
atmosphere.
She brought the
bouquet
to her lips in its
fullness,
then touched his
wrist. At her window
a long blade of oak
tapped its way to
barrenness.
At dawn, new petals
thin as tissue paper
raise their
blossoms.
From a porcelain
vase
they strike the air.
THE
OLD BORDERS
Mouth near another
mouth
In a miscellaneous
universe;
Of all the spark
plugs, wing nuts, star bolts!
One mouth closing in
upon another,
Not merely for one
tongue
To touch another
here are
Two mouths in vast
territory
Each moving toward a
closed space opening,
As hungry as a
prayer for the dying,
Mouths with ears
filtering soft-spoken demands,
Trying not to hear
parting
Sighs, tentative
farewells, endings,
Broken vows,
violated treaties, bombed truces,
The huge despair of
nations
One rosy lip against
another
A whisper for
defense.
Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |
