Lynne Knight

Books, Chapbooks, TRANSLATIONS and Anthologies

Full-length collections:

The Language of Forgetting, Sixteen Rivers Press (2018)

Lynne Knight | The Language of Forgetting

“'In the end it's all one story...' Lynne Knight tells us in one poem, but The Language of Forgetting is inspired by a fascination with the accumulated secrets lying under the many stories of a lived life. She holds her readers inside a liminal dwelling where imagination is companion, refuge, protest, and aspiration; she explores the tensions between imagination and the real, the mundane and the mythic, longing and losing. This is thriving, memorable poetry.” —Forrest Hamer

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The Persistence of Longing, Terrapin Books (2016)

Lynne Knight | The Persistence of Longing

“I love these poems, love how they sweep me along, sweep me up into the arms of the kind of longing that seems unsayable, untranslatable, impossible to describe in any language, with any words—the words turning back into breath, as this poet says, as she creates the sense of that longing, itself, in words, in these sometimes-breathless lines, sometimes against the restraint of form, the sweet ache of rhyme, creating that sense of urgency that’s so like desire, itself, and the sense of danger that infuses even the deepest pleasure, especially the deepest pleasure.” —Cecilia Woloch, author of Carpathia

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Again, Sixteen Rivers Press (2009)
Winner of the 2007 Sixteen Rivers Press Competition

Lynne Knight | Again

“What is instantly remarkable in Again is the exquisite clarity of its imagery and its profound, fervid tone. Her voice 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.” —Laure-Anne Bosselaar

While we slept, such heavy rain swept past
it shook the last roses loose. They lay
smashed on the deck this morning, their petals
scattered like big white tears.
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Night in the Shape of a Mirror, David Robert Books (2006)

Lynne Knight | Night in the Shape of a Mirror

“These are extraordinary poems filled with the gorgeous and excruciating truth of being mortal. Knight writes about fear and loss with breathtaking courage, finding temporary glimmers of light even in the midst of heartbreaking and inevitable darkness.” —Elizabeth Rosner

I followed her into fog-shrouded hills.
She walked so quickly I doubted she was real,
but then I saw the stoop, the slight hitch
in her step as she hesitated in front of a gate
to hurry me forward, her hair streaming
behind her as she moved ahead, bright river
in the night.
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The Book of Common Betrayals, Bear Star Press (2002)
Winner of the 2002 Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize

Lynne Knight | The Book of Common Betrayals

“In poems fueled by a combination of passion and panic, Knight disarms us only to expand our vision. She turns the inner world outward and exposes what we’ve kept secret—sometimes even from ourselves.” —Andrea Hollander

Sleepless late one night I examined the infinitive:
to place. What would be the agent?
Hands, memory: I tried to place him.
After a while, I remembered.
He was the one in love with bones.
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Dissolving Borders, Quarterly Review of Literature Poetry Series (1996)
Winner of the Quarterly Review of Literature International Poetry Competition

Lynne Knight | Dissolving Borders

“Highly imaginative, with a driving force, Knight follows her poems wherever they outrageously, magically, necessarily take her.” —Ted Weiss

I took them all to forget you.
The first one liked to keep one step ahead
and what he said got lost in the rush
of traffic headed in the same direction
I took when I left. Then the one
who wanted me to read the news every
morning while he waited for the sun
to do something rare, something worthy
of poetry; incinerate me right
there in my chair, say.
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Chapbooks:

The Argument Against Eternity, Mudlark (2018)

Lynne Knight | The Argument Against Eternity

"We mean to present and preserve accomplished work that locates itself anywhere on the spectrum of contemporary practice. Although we are not innocent, we do imagine ourselves capable of surprise." Mudlark is edited and published, independently, by William Slaughter. An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics / Never in and never out of print...

    In this version, it’s the mother who goes to Hell.
In more ways than one, but let’s start
 
    with the physical. She’s exhausted.
Who wouldn’t be, doing the same thing year in,
 
    year out, the nothingness of winter wrenched open
at the root by spring’s effusion. And the whole
 
    goddess thing is getting old. Why this need
to keep up appearances? So tedious. So relentless.
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The Bone Woman, Mudlark (2017)

Lynne Knight | The Bone Woman

"We mean to present and preserve accomplished work that locates itself anywhere on the spectrum of contemporary practice. Although we are not innocent, we do imagine ourselves capable of surprise." Mudlark is edited and published, independently, by William Slaughter. An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics / Never in and never out of print...

Let me swim down the lightless
sea. The bones swim easily,
they veer & twist.
 
Or let me make my way far back in a cave
where the only sound is the small slide
of water down the spine of rock,
my spine the only light, faint glow
inside the black.
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Snow Effects/Effets de Neige, with Nicole Courtet, Small Poetry Press (2008)

Lynne Knight | Snow Effects/Effets de Neige

“With genuine imaginative reach, a keen eye, and penetrating sensibilities, Knight enters fifteen Impressionist winterscapes and makes them her own, finding both beauty and insight along the way. Her explanations carry the authority of long contemplation . . . Each poem expands and liberates its image in this beautifully crafter, thoughtful, and inventive book.” —Jane Hirshfield

There was more snow than usual
those winters, as if Nature had contrived
to complicate things for the painters,
 
confuse their eyes while they tried
to paint light becoming light
with the speed of the body becoming
 
lover—lifted from the ordinary
into radiant particles.
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Defying the Flat Surface, The Ledge Press (2006)
Winner of The Ledge Press 2005 Poetry Chapbook Award

Lynne Knight | Defying the Flat Surface

There’s a glass vase whose moss roses
wait for death in clear water.
 
Beside the vase, on a creamy cloth
where shadows stay immobile,
a single rose creates another diagonal
 
to unify the design. Still,
how disturbing, that one left out.
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Life as Weather, Two Rivers Review (2005)
Editor’s Prize

Deer in Berkeley, Sow’s Ear (2004)
Winner of the 2003 Sow’s Ear Poetry Chapbook Competition

Lynne Knight | Deer in Berkeley

Hand on the door—gesture of escape
like that—she waits like someone in
a superstition, then shakes her head, turns
to him and says, If everything on earth
is sacred, you’ll have to spend eternities
repenting
, a speech slightly ruined
in its effects by seeming rehearsed,
but he would have yawned, anyway,
affected some insouciance just to prove
 
this parting would not wreck his heart.
Outside—each looks, as if to authenticate
their words with time and place—
two deer move down the bank, feeding
on new acanthus.
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Snow Effects, Small Poetry Press (2000)


Translations:

I Know (Je sais), translated with the author Ito Naga, Sixteen Rivers Press (2013)

I Know (Je sais) | Translated by Lynne Knight with the author Ito Naga

“Ito Naga offers an inventory of the given that is at once diverting, unexpected and, inevitably, provisional—an inventory that presents reality for what it is: an infinitely expanding universe.”
—Jean-Pierre Siméon
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Anthologies:

Fire and Rain   Drive, They Said   Times Ten: An Anthology of Northern California Poets   The Best American Poetry 2000   Who Are The Rich And Where Do They Live?   When She Named Fire   Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down

Lucille Lang Day and Ruth Nolan, eds. Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California. Scarlet Tanager Books (2018).

Kurt Brown, ed. Drive, They Said: Poems about Americans and Their Cars. Milkweed (1994)

Times Ten, Small Poetry Press (1996)

Rita Dove, Guest Editor. The Best American Poetry 2000.

Richard Jones, ed. Who Are the Rich and Where Do They Live? Poetry East (2000)

Andrea Hollander (Budy), ed. When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women. Autumn House Press (2008)

Andrena Zawinski, ed. Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down. Scarlet Tanager Books (2012)

 

 

Lynne Knight | The Persistence of Longing
 
Lynne Knight | The Bone Woman
 
Lynne Knight | Again
 
Lynne Knight | Night in the Shape of a Mirror
 
Lynne Knight | The Book of Common Betrayals
 
Lynne Knight | Dissolving Borders
 
I Know (Je sais), translated with the author Ito Naga
 
Lynne Knight | Snow Effects
 
Lynne Knight | Defying the Flat Surface
 
Lynne Knight | Deer in Berkeley