The Aqua Notebook

by Tasha Cotter

Began in 2016 in an aqua notebook, this book of poetry chronicles one year. Locating the poetry and tiny moments of transcendence in our commonplace existence, Cotter crafts poetry from life, revealing the strange beauty that often exists in our daily lives.

Approachable, conversational, and immediate, this collection offers poems that are at times spontaneous, but always carefully crafted. Locating moments of real joy and peace, Cotter illuminates our lives, asking us to look carefully for the poetic that’s often in plain sight. She shows us how the smallest moments can elevate and inspire us. She writes, “Tonight I discovered what I discover / Each day: all along I wanted this / Exact miraculous thing.” These poems will challenge and inspire you.

80 pages, Paperback

Published February 20, 2019

About the author

Tasha Cotter's third collection of poetry Astonishments was released in 2020 with FutureCycle Press. Her collaboratively written novel Us, in Pieces (with Christopher Green) was released in July 2019. She lives in Coupeville, Washington.

Reviews

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry and story all in one book. This series of poems, only separated and titled by the dates spaced throughout a year, was surprising for me. First , that each poem didn’t follow any rules of poetry I had learned. I’ve seen similar work in “The New Yorker” and other magazines. Now a whole book that I followed, understood, and it made me think has taught me my education in poetry has been sorely limited. Second, that the poems as a whole were a coherent story really surprised and moved me. I feel this is a book I’ll come back to for randomly looking at individual poems while remembering the overall story. My only negative is I felt too many selections were rewordings of the same idea. The poems, then, are a bit repetitious at times but that very fact is a point to be made, too. I read a free LibraryThing Early Reviewers edition; if it hadn’t been free, I wouldn’t have read it but now I would pay for it.