In Two Emilys, Dickinson and Brontë meet in the memory and imagination of a master poet. Potos evokes these writers-contemporaries living across the Atlantic from one another-as muses and mentors, following in Brontë's steps across the moors, their "wuthering skies", "the gorse / grazing my ankles as I go." And we are there with her, blown about by the wind that "is wider up there", where the "moor air / erases your every last edge". At the Emily Dickinson Museum, Potos wonders "how would it be to live / in the aftermath of her? Would she guide / my hand across the modern page?" One is tempted to say yes. Potos daringly takes up the challenge of situating herself among the greatest writers of their age and succeeds brilliantly.-Judith Sornberger, author of The Sorority of Stillness: A Gallery of Women in Art and I Call to You from TimeAndrea Potos invites us to join writers in a quiet Amherst bedroom, or fields where wind erases the edges of heather and gorse-or to be delighted by remembered poets in a mall, a gym or a movie theater. In these poems, time beautifully splits, like light through a chandelier or a glass doorknob.-Jeannine Atkins, author of Green Promises: Girls Who Loved the Earth and Borrowed Names: Poems About Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C.J. Walker, Marie Curie and their DaughtersA literature lover's dream! Through dream, letter, history, travel, memory and pure imagination, we enter the real and literary lives of not only two Emilys, but also an Andrea. I love the weaving in of familiar themes and language-from the moor and gorse to the white gown and the Amherst home-plus there are plenty of surprises! It's a joy of a collection to read-a playful, soulful honoring of two writers who changed the ways we see the world. -Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of The Unfolding and host of The Poetic Path
