You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. –Ray Bradbury
My New Book
After Hours
In After Hours, Pat Mottola proves she is that rare poet who is a master of the portrait poem. Whether her protagonist is a seductive woman sitting in a bar filled with leering men, or a man who works with caskets, or the legendary Eve, or an immigrant grandfather, or a maid, or the author’s second grade teacher, Mottola captures the idiosyncrasies, core, and heartbreak of each individual with a specificity that is electrifying. Her voice––sometimes ironic, sometimes tender, but always candid, is perfectly fitted to the poem like a custom-made dress. This poet has a gift for gorgeous imagery that is breathtaking. And she is daring in her wide range of subjects, from “The Serial Monogamist” to “Last Vietnam-Era Draftee Retires.” I loved After Hours. Pat Mottola is an absolutely mesmerizing and powerful poet.
––Laura Boss, author of The Best Lover ( NYQ); and Editor of Lips In After Hours, the poet’s original and unbiased voice covers a wide range of humanity, surprising the reader from poem to poem. Pat Mottola’s daring is uncommon. She makes the personal universal. She finds humanity on the raw edge. From sexuality to social commentary to her grandfather, the range is extraordinary and the depth insightful. In “Dining Out,” “They sit opposite each other, silent,/as if blank stares will bring back appetites.” Pat Mottola’s poetry illuminates the past, the present, friendship, old age, childhood. Power, range, and lyricism make this an uncommon book. ––Michael Miller, author of The Different War
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Pat Mottola Receives Prestigious CT Board of Regents Teaching Award
Pat Mottola was recently named the CT Board of Regents Outstanding Adjunct Professor. The award is based on evidence of outstanding teaching characterized by exceptional teaching skills, innovative/creative instructional delivery, impact on student learning, and collegial collaborations. Pat has taught Creative Writing at Southern Connecticut State University since 2011. She also teaches Poetry to Senior Citizens across Connecticut. Pat is Co-President of the Connecticut Poetry Society, and served as editor of Connecticut River Review from 2011-2017. She is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Under the Red Dress, 2016, and After Hours, 2018. She was recently featured in the Southern Alumni Magazine.
https://news.southernct.edu/2019/03/11/pat-mottola/ Pat Mottola, featured in Hartford Magazine
Pat Mottola, featured in Hartford Magazine,
January 2018, tells of her work mentoring Afghan women writers. Click here to read |
Under the Red Dress
These poems open with the sensuality of a rose. Mottola writes in “She Put Her Lies on the Table”: “Still / they spilled like last drops of wine / begging to be drunk, their breathless / bouquet lusting for more;” and her readers will flush from pink to deep red under the influence of poems that sweetly whisper in your ear, breathlessly as in the best of erotica, or in a voice that could be christened as that of a 21st century Anais Nin. In the best of Pat Mottola’s poems, there is a quietude that often expresses a millennial loneliness that can be as sexy as a red dress—and as sheer. What a reader will find between the covers of Under a Red Dress is poetry that is sensually alive, and whose pulse quickens with the turn of each and every page. ~Wally Swist, author of Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love
The woman in Under the Red Dress radiates a warm hunger through a voice whose words radiate in sharp, sensual images. She is at once a temptress and consoler, wry and sweet amid luminous secrets that “slink between the wrinkles / of your cleanest dirty sheets.” These are lines of “lipstick eternally smeared / after all those one-night stands.” Here thrives a gallery of lovers — successes and failures, alluring and pathetic, “those bad boys / who keep me coming back, a few to whom / I almost said I do…” Throughout, the image of a red dress appears both corporeal and spectral, all “because loneliness is quiet.” Like Anne Sexton, old fables are recast in erotic and plaintive evocations of Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and Cinderella, where “the Prince isn’t Charming / after he gets the girl.” These poems travel a wide ground, from bedroom to bar, from drive-in to a box of ancient photographs where family history lingers. Mottola’s first book is sweeping, heartfelt, and skillfully rendered. ~Jeffrey Alfier, Founder and Co-editor, Blue Horse Press and San Pedro River Review
The woman in Under the Red Dress radiates a warm hunger through a voice whose words radiate in sharp, sensual images. She is at once a temptress and consoler, wry and sweet amid luminous secrets that “slink between the wrinkles / of your cleanest dirty sheets.” These are lines of “lipstick eternally smeared / after all those one-night stands.” Here thrives a gallery of lovers — successes and failures, alluring and pathetic, “those bad boys / who keep me coming back, a few to whom / I almost said I do…” Throughout, the image of a red dress appears both corporeal and spectral, all “because loneliness is quiet.” Like Anne Sexton, old fables are recast in erotic and plaintive evocations of Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and Cinderella, where “the Prince isn’t Charming / after he gets the girl.” These poems travel a wide ground, from bedroom to bar, from drive-in to a box of ancient photographs where family history lingers. Mottola’s first book is sweeping, heartfelt, and skillfully rendered. ~Jeffrey Alfier, Founder and Co-editor, Blue Horse Press and San Pedro River Review