Andrea Potos
The Poetry Reader Wants Meaning
Otherwise --
an ocean without salt,
a rowboat without oars.
I need land within my reach.
Don't talk to me about negative capability,
suspending myself
in anything less than certainty--
wasn't Keats
darkened, messy--
rambling bits of shadow on his face masking
who knows what--
Give me the reason for the nightingale's song.
Bio
Andrea Potos is the author of three poetry collections, including Yaya's Cloth (Iris Press) and Abundance to Share With the Birds (Finishing Line Press). Another collection We Lit the Lamps Ourselves is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in Ireland in early 2012. Her poems appear widely in journals and anthologies and online. Her photo here was taken outside the window of John Keats' study at his home in Hampstead, England.