{"id":808,"date":"2025-02-16T12:56:43","date_gmt":"2025-02-16T17:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=808"},"modified":"2025-02-16T12:56:43","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T17:56:43","slug":"review-of-emily-dickinsons-selfie-by-jennifer-poteet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=808","title":{"rendered":"Review of Emily Dickinson’s Selfie by Jennifer Poteet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Poteet. Emily Dickinson\u2019s Selfie. <\/em>Bottlecap Press, 2023. 23 pages. $10.00\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever had so much fun reading a collection of poetry as I have with Jennifer Poteet\u2019s chapbook, Emily Dickinson\u2019s Selfie. <\/em>I don\u2019t mean that the poems are simply funny, although some of them are funny, but that what Poteet is able to do with voice and style is surprising, impressive, and delightful. In this collection, each poem adopts the style of another earlier poet, from Gertrude Stein to Walt Whitman, from Sappho to Robert Hayden, incorporating 21st<\/sup> century icons\u2014from the selfies of the title to Trader Joe\u2019s and Botox and GPS and Uber\u2014in order to re-imagine these other accomplished poets. These poems are not the parodies we see so often of Williams\u2019 \u201cThis Is Just to Say\u201d or the variations of Stevens\u2019 \u201cThirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.\u201d They are each their own poems, adeptly incorporating the voice of the poet under consideration, so that, for example, the rhyme in \u201cGPS on a Snowy Evening,\u201d alluding to Frost\u2019s \u201cStopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,\u201d is entirely different from the rhyme in \u201cTwo Women in the Snow,\u201d an homage to Plath. The fun for me in this collection occurs not only because Poteet is so skilled, and obviously well-read, but also because the content of each poem is just right, clearly but subtly enough incorporating details from the biographies or content of their own poems. We see Walt Whitman, therefore, at a Trader Joe\u2019s rather than the supermarket of his own poem, and we read of Williams considering Covid.<\/p>\n

Here is the opening poem, \u201cGertrude Stein Logs in to Yahoo! Mail\u201d:<\/p>\n

A password is a password
\nis a password. If I could only
\nremember mine, could I.
\nI tried Picasso; I tried Matisse.
\nAfter three times why
\nafter three times why
\ndoes Yahoo! lock you out?
\nMaybe Alice remembers
\nwhat my password is.
\nShe\u2019s baking something in the kitchen
\nbut yells out for me to try
\nToklas this time.
\nAlice, without whom I cannot breathe.
\nTender Alice B. Alice be Alice.
\nToklas works.<\/p>\n

On its surface, this poem conveys an experience we\u2019ve all had, adapting to the inconvenience of modern convenience. The poem incorporates Stein\u2019s stylistic gestures, the repetition, the incomplete sentences, the associative logic, so that even if the names were not present in the title and poem itself, we would recognize this language as a reference to Stein. Yet it is also more than that. There\u2019s a turn near the end, as Alice becomes more than a background figure who keeps the household running, as Gertrude\u2019s feelings for Alice are revealed as so much more profound than mere wordplay. In an extended analysis, I could say so much more about the thematic depth of this poem, its exploration of inclusion and exclusion and the nature of socially scorned relationships, but a short review is not the place for that type of reading. The potential fruitfulness of such a reading, however, supports my point that these poems are fun and also serious literature.<\/p>\n

Here are a few lines from \u201cTwo Women in the Snow\u201d:<\/p>\n

We hum. We\u2019re schoolgirl chums.
\nWe\u2019re two jolly gravediggers.
\nSylvia says she wants to melt as snow does.
\nAs for the piles we make,
\nI think they look like brides,
\neager to shed their white satin dresses.<\/p>\n

And here are a few lines from \u201cOn a Winter Sunday I See Robert Hayden in Shop n\u2019 Save\u201d:<\/p>\n

I come up short and as I ask the cashier
\nif I can put some items back,
\nhe slips me a fifty dollar bill
\nand disappears before I can thank him.<\/p>\n

And from \u201cEmily Dickinson\u2019s Selfie\u201d:<\/p>\n

I take a secret picture
\nafter pressing the last summer flowers.
\nIn a long white dress and Birkenstocks
\nI dance, in grass, for several hours\u2014<\/p>\n

Each poem is uniquely executed, the craft choices smart and controlled. Most of us could probably write one or two poems in the voices of other poets whose work we know well. Very few of us, I suspect, could exhibit such a range\u2014our own stylistic tics would eventually get in the way. Poteet\u2019s range is what impresses me most. Emily Dickinson\u2019s Selfie <\/em>is her second chapbook. I hope we\u2019ll be seeing many more collections from her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Poteet. Emily Dickinson\u2019s Selfie. Bottlecap Press, 2023. 23 pages. $10.00 I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever had so much fun reading a collection of poetry as I have with Jennifer Poteet\u2019s chapbook, Emily Dickinson\u2019s Selfie. I don\u2019t mean that the poems are simply funny, although some of them are funny, but that what Poteet is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[76,75],"class_list":["post-808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek","tag-emily-dickinsons-selfie","tag-jennifer-poteet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions\/810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}