And Drought Will Follow invites us into a place of hard stubborn things – shards, buckles, cups, combs, brass gears and springs. Lee Potts offers a book that you read not just with your eye, but with your hand; in this book words are tools wielded by someone who respects tools as much as he respects the world they serve and shape, interrogate and celebrate. Of his father’s tools, Potts writes, They caught the exact size of things/ by reach, touch, sight. The same could be said of what’s in this poet’s toolbox. In one of the most compelling poems of the book, “Standing Water,” the poet writes, We/learned/to still ourselves/to allow our/ bodies’ hollow/ chambers/to lift us again/above the weight/of water, and our/breath/ returned our voices to us. The measured, beautifully crafted lines in And Drought Will Follow immerse us in a richly evocative world, but they also help to lift us above the weight of the world and to return our voices to us.
