[ n a t u r e in l i t e r a t u r e ]

Reaction Paper

 

Visiting Writers Series:

Josh Poteat

February 8^th, 2007

 

“I abandon you to the willows.”

 

            The reading began with an introduction by the author’s good friend, whose name I didn’t happen to catch. He was entertaining, making the audience laugh as he showed the author’s character and point-of-view. The author, Josh Poteat, took the podium when the introducer was done, and gave his audience a taste of his writing.

            He had a quiet, whispy, calm voice. The words from Mr. Poteat’s mouth seemed to ebb and flow, like the poems he had written. He had a dark side, which was revealed in his first selection of readings, ones he called Irish Curses and Meditations. They were of a bit grotesque, but the mental imagery was very strong. He had a way of relating his surroundings to death and darkness. He then continued with a collection of poems with titles based off of 1941 catalog of books. I’ve done exercises similar to this in my writing classes in the past, and it was cool to see how he could relate the titles back to nature and a central theme. He finished the reading with a selection of new poems, in which he described himself as a “pseudo-scientist”. These poems had lots of animals, including a fox, lamb, and finally, a pig, mixed with scientific terminology.

Mr. Poteat had much inspiration from his surroundings, which is visible in his work. All of his poems were nature related, which was inspiring to me. Being able to capture the essence of nature, both light and dark, and translate it to spoken word was definitely a great experience to listen to. There were a lot of lines from his poems that I picked out distinctively as being really thought provoking, like the title. I enjoyed this reading, and left feeling like I wanted to write.