Overview

Where It Will probes the struggle for acceptance in an individual's history, the tension and disconnection with his gay partner and friends at pivotal times and one's place in the family, coupled with the loss connected to the past. The poems reflect on what the mind stores, rewriting a biography to make sense of the present and how you discover yourself in memory.

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Reviews

"Anthony Botti's poems look unflinchingly at mortality and the seasons of life, finely tuned to the rhythms of the natural world; internally and externally, Botti hears truths spoken to him, through him: ""Your voice unspools inside me knitting /on the porch while bats crisscross/ the yard. The blow-up// that morning at Dad's funeral is as burnished/ as a scar on that old elm tree."" He writes of death (of his parents, the deaths of friends, death of love and expectation) as lyrically as he does of the wider world he senses around him, finding strength and security in an undeclared partnership: ""Behind the frozen pane/ the day glistens on the windowsill, tracks of deer in the creased/ snow. How close they came while I was sleeping."" The meditative poems in Where It Will hold stories of love-romantic love, familial love, love for the earth and its creatures-as well as of heartbreak, standing at the crossroads of holding onto or letting go of love. Valerie Duff, author of Aquamarine (Lily Poetry) Anthony Botti's Where It Will flashes with brilliant, intimate portrait sketches of those loved and lost due to disease. We are privy to the yearning and regrets of a lifetime ensconced in poetry that portrays details with novelistic accuracy. Botti takes us to the marshes of the Netherlands where horses romp and through the dark nights of the soul, ""All night I live with cracking branches"" (from ""December Night"") and ""words that fell over us like confetti"" (from ""While You Were Away""). Longing is expressed through regret and memories ""one notation at a time""(from ""Reading My Father"") and we want to find out more through these poems which are very much like secret notes and letters to the past. Susan Kay Anderson, author of Mezzanine (Finishing Line Press) Where It Will is a collection that honors how we love each other, if we are so lucky as to love, exploring the difficulties in accepting our own failings and of those who we share our lives with. These poems are offerings-""small fragments,"" Botti writes in ""Last Will and Testament""-to parents, lovers, friends lost to AIDS. Botti draws sharp lines around the mundanity of daily routines, the ebb and flow of long-term relationships, and the inevitability of loss. In terse confessions, regret and desire pull at each other as naturally as the moon and the waves, or like a ship at sea-no clearer than in my favorite poem in the collection, ""Ahab's Crew"" ""Never again/ would we drop into our bodies/ with the same aching."" Chris Ankney, author of Hearsay"

Author Information

Anthony Botti grew up in western PA and holds a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) from Harvard Divinity School. His poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, The MacGuffin, Cider Press Review, Flint Hills Review, and Mudfish. Over the last 25 years he has worked in behavioral health administration serving students, staff, and faculty at Harvard University Health Services. He divides his time between Boston and the Berkshires with his partner and their pug, Puck.

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