Library Journal

 

Potts, Randall. Trickster. Univ. of Iowa. (Kuhl House Poets). Sept. 2014. 82p. ISBN 9781609382841. pap. $18.50. POETRY

 

Yes, it’s a trickster world—“The more I struggle/ The worse it gets,” clarifies the opening poem of Potts’s limpid new collection, his first in two decades, and as the closing poem reminds us, “It’s easy to see/ how we forget ourselves// in the rain’s momentary/ colonnades & passageways.” But if Potts starts off rueful, his pithy, distilled lines bring us quickly to the physicality of the world, as he roots in the garden, pictures “Fog/ Antlers/ Pollen maze/ Bee-hum,” and recalls the “bloody bits” of a butchered sheep. Fresh, accessible, immediate.