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Leave-Taking
Leave-Taking moves through stages of grief—the reckoning, the remembering, the rituals—after the sudden death of a spouse. The poems trace reflections on a long marriage, and what it is like to be left behind. The poems travel from Haida Gwaii on the west coast of Canada, across the mountains and into the prairie city of Winnipeg, to the beaches of Cape Cod; however, they stop often to rest in the quiet spaces found inside Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto. Through these interspersed cemetery poems and epitaphs—mini-stories in stone—grief unfolds from many perspectives: praise and lament, love and disenchantment, hope and pain, faith and doubt. Above all, Leave-Taking is a tender love elegy; one that connects with anyone who has experienced deep loss.
“An impressive debut from a deeply observant poet, Leave-Taking explores the complexities of love, loss, and grief. Drawing upon music, art, nature, and place as points of departure, the poems alternate between recollection and attention to the present. The result is an evocative and engaging collection.”
—Elena Johnson, author of Field Notes for the Alpine Tundra
“Marilyn Potter’s Leave-Taking is an elegy sung in lyrics of layered tenderness and “hurt—sharp, like flint.” Her poems, with eloquence that can hover in the lived moment’s contradictions, search for “clarity [that] comes through enigmas” in memories of love and marriage. They are also keenly attentive to the world—to Himalayan pines in the Forest of Remembrance, the Coca-Cola bottle someone has left on a marble slab, to clouds “dark silver / —duct tape without the sheen.” They show us how the world can hold our grief, its petals scattered under a willow, or lodged “in a holy pocket just above / where the trunk meets the earth.” And they are poems with news of renewal, like that of the Tamarack “—all those needles / lying there on the ground / and every April / —like the Fool’s surprise /... silky / slippery apple-green.”
—Sue Chenette, author of Slender Human Weight and The Bones of his Being
“An impressive debut from a deeply observant poet, Leave-Taking explores the complexities of love, loss, and grief. Drawing upon music, art, nature, and place as points of departure, the poems alternate between recollection and attention to the present. The result is an evocative and engaging collection.”
—Elena Johnson, author of Field Notes for the Alpine Tundra
“Marilyn Potter’s Leave-Taking is an elegy sung in lyrics of layered tenderness and “hurt—sharp, like flint.” Her poems, with eloquence that can hover in the lived moment’s contradictions, search for “clarity [that] comes through enigmas” in memories of love and marriage. They are also keenly attentive to the world—to Himalayan pines in the Forest of Remembrance, the Coca-Cola bottle someone has left on a marble slab, to clouds “dark silver / —duct tape without the sheen.” They show us how the world can hold our grief, its petals scattered under a willow, or lodged “in a holy pocket just above / where the trunk meets the earth.” And they are poems with news of renewal, like that of the Tamarack “—all those needles / lying there on the ground / and every April / —like the Fool’s surprise /... silky / slippery apple-green.”
—Sue Chenette, author of Slender Human Weight and The Bones of his Being
94 pages, Paperback
Published October 13, 2016
About the author
Marilyn Potter
1 book2 followersMarilyn Potter is an award-winning poet and writer living in Toronto. Her poems have appeared in both Canadian and international literary journals and anthologies, been translated into Japanese, and carved into stone in Vancouver’s Van Dusen Garden. Leave-Taking is her first poetry collection.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 1, 2024
“… in Toronto’s snowiest winter.
Only snow, and more snow, the road obliterated.
We are once more on that Kuralek prairie, tasting light,
every flake on my tongue sweeter than summer’s honey.” (“Myth” by Marilyn Potter)
Absolutely gorgeous. Inspiring.
*Leave your life documented to the car—
just the keys and yourself. Your solitude.
On a path across the frozen riverbed, palm
a piece of frozen wood from a stump-crotch.
Notice only once its air-weight cools your
mittened palm, the ice-crusted black satin
hoof of a deer bone picked pink-clean.
Hear the trees squeak, bare in the wind.
Ice fishers on La Salle pack up their early
season, but I am fresh, I am new, the yellow
river grass laid under a blanket of crisp white
boot-crunch snow. How the smaller trees
felled by the wind, gather in dark pyramids;
how my people mimic them, stack sticks
in triangle shelters against the end.
When red fox quicksilvers through the forest,
you’ll want to move. Instead, stand still. Watch
how it dances atop the pale canvas of winter,
marking its life on the bottoms of dark denuded
trunks. See it come close. Smell the winter air,
the piss, the trucks rumbling on the highway,
the one peal of a train whistle cutting lines
through the sleeping prairie. Life under all this.*
— reflections on Pollack Park at New Year’s, KL
after Marilyn Potter
Only snow, and more snow, the road obliterated.
We are once more on that Kuralek prairie, tasting light,
every flake on my tongue sweeter than summer’s honey.” (“Myth” by Marilyn Potter)
Absolutely gorgeous. Inspiring.
*Leave your life documented to the car—
just the keys and yourself. Your solitude.
On a path across the frozen riverbed, palm
a piece of frozen wood from a stump-crotch.
Notice only once its air-weight cools your
mittened palm, the ice-crusted black satin
hoof of a deer bone picked pink-clean.
Hear the trees squeak, bare in the wind.
Ice fishers on La Salle pack up their early
season, but I am fresh, I am new, the yellow
river grass laid under a blanket of crisp white
boot-crunch snow. How the smaller trees
felled by the wind, gather in dark pyramids;
how my people mimic them, stack sticks
in triangle shelters against the end.
When red fox quicksilvers through the forest,
you’ll want to move. Instead, stand still. Watch
how it dances atop the pale canvas of winter,
marking its life on the bottoms of dark denuded
trunks. See it come close. Smell the winter air,
the piss, the trucks rumbling on the highway,
the one peal of a train whistle cutting lines
through the sleeping prairie. Life under all this.*
— reflections on Pollack Park at New Year’s, KL
after Marilyn Potter
Displaying 1 of 1 review