Lynne Knight
Lynne Knight
Lynne Knight’s previous collections are Dissolving Borders (Quarterly Review of Literature), The Book of Common Betrayals (Bear Star Press), and Night in the Shape of a Mirror (David Robert Books), plus three award-winning chapbooks. Her cycle of poems on Impressionist winter paintings, Snow Effects (Small Poetry Press), has been translated into French by Nicole Courtet. Knight’s work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2000, and her awards include a Theodore Roethke Award from Poetry Northwest, a Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and an NEA grant.
The Language of Forgetting
Lynne Knight’s mindful, lyrical book reads like a heart-and-soul video, Season One. Her poetry thrills and intrigues, warns and shares, always in language that catches. —Al Young
The Language of Forgetting is inspired by a fascination with the accumulated secrets lying under the many stories of a lived life. This is thriving, memorable poetry. —Forrest Hamer
Lynne Knight has always been a poet attentive to the body, its desires and debilitations, and, above all, its dreams—and these shapely, meditative poems register the myriad ways humans trade the known for the unknown, which may be dreaming’s greatest gift. The Language of Forgetting maps the country of loss with stunning, ruthless clarity; in so doing, Knight shows that art is a fortress against impermanence, that true poetry is unforgettable.
Again (2009)
“What is instantly remarkable in Again is the exquisite clarity of its imagery and its profound, fervent tone. And what I love about Lynne Knight’s poems is that they feel and sound exactly true. Hers is a voice one immediately trusts. It is sensuous, attentive, intelligent, and ruthlessly honest as she interrogates the tangled relationship between what is said or kept secret, loved or feared, lit or kept in shadows—a chiaroscuro that her poems relentlessly explore. ‘Suddenly, knowledge comes, unstoppable as water’ says Knight, and in response I’ll quote another one of her wonderful lines: ‘How beautiful it is . . . and will be when you look again.’ —Laure-Anne Vosselaar
I Know(Je sais) Goes to Nkakanzock, Cameroon
In the spring of 2015, Élisa Minoue, a student at Oakland School for the Arts, decided that she would help the elementary school in her grandfather’s Cameroon village by raising funds through a “Music for Education” concert at the Alliance Française de Berkeley. When we at Sixteen Rivers learned of Élisa’s project, we asked if the high school in her grandfather’s village would like some copies of Ito Naga’s I Know (Je sais). Indeed—the high school students study both French and English, so the books were more than welcome. In September, 2015, we donated 128 copies of the book to the school, thanks to the generosity of the Howard S. Whitney Foundation, which provided us with a grant to cover the shipping costs. Élisa has written about her project here, and about her visit through Music For Education.
Lynne’s I Know (Je sais) was chosen by Vogue‘s Beauty Editor Catherine Piercy as a great summer read in the June 24, 2016 issue.
A podcast of “AMERICA LISTEN ALLEN GINSBERG IS CALLING YOU AGAIN,” part of the Poets Respond series, is up at RATTLE.
A podcast of Lynne’s poem “The Letter from James Foley,” is available at RATTLE. Her poem was published as part of the Poets Respond series.
Read Lynne’s interview with Ito Naga.
Read Lynne’s account of meeting Ito Naga.
Publication of this book has been made possible by a Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Lynne was nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize by RATTLE, for “While Plum Blossoms Sweep Down like Snow” (Winter 2013), and Blue Fifth Review, for “Still Life in a Different Room.”
Read the review of Lynne’s translation of Ito Naga’s Je Sais (I Know), on the Huffington Post
Lynne was awarded the Solstice Literary Magazine’s Stephen Dunn Prize in Poetry for “Smoke.”
A podcast of Lynne’s poem “Elegy for the Parents” is on the Poetry Foundation website.
Read the interview of Lynne and review of Again in the Spring 2010 issue of Rattle (the feature article on Lynne begins on page 6).
Read Laura Moore’s review of Again in the February 10, 2010 San Francisco Examiner.
Lynne’s poem “O, Penelope!” appeared in Poetry Daily on May 23, 2009.
The Persistence of Longing, published by Terrapin Press, can be ordered through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.