April 4: Pattie McCarthy, “philadelphia: predella”
Your name: Thomas Devaney (http://www.thomasdevaney.net/)
Author’s name: Pattie McCarthy (online: Pew Fellowship Artist Profile)
What’s the Philly (love) connection?: The Philly love connection is that I love Pattie McCarthy’s poems. The poems are all intersections. They are intersections of usage and the historical record to name but two. The poems all occur in moments and meet in places right in front your face, on the page.
Why’d you nominate this poem?: The way locations move and interact in certain moments: ‘the footprints inside my jacket,’ the all-at-onceness of ‘best hot/ pretzel medium tea. dramatic, in its way–/circular tracings of debris & all that/ material that hold one/ together & birches (unexpected).’
McCarthy’s poetry isn’t fragmented, but instead it is the way every thing feels in a moment. All the intersections that are Pattie McCarthy include: cecil b. moore (northbound) ascent; walnut-locust (northbound); the ”marvelously yellow” light of mario lanza park; thirteenth & morris (complexity of the mind); fourth & delancy–hogarth’s/ “line of beauty” (that is, ogreed); passyunk triangle, who can resist a meander off/ the grid, the missed/ opportunities of a triangle?
