The Language of Forgetting

Poetry. It was July, the woods filled with the sound of wind in the pines, water over rocks, the language of forgetting. Like the wind, like water, the poems in Lynne Knight's sixth collection carry you along into territory you thought you knew but don't. Here is the house of your childhood, missing walls and glass, with bare earth for floor. Here is your mother, leaving you by slow degrees. Here is your daughter, watching you fail again. 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. In lines whose swift insinuations enter the psyche and shift its boundaries, Knight maps the country of loss with stunning, ruthless clarity; in so doing, she shows that art is a fortress against impermanence, that true poetry is unforgettable.