The Persistence of Longing

Named a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry as one of the best works by a northern California poet published in 2016

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. I've never read poems that seem to me more accurate about love and desire and sexual relationships and their almost-inevitable shattering--darkly gorgeous and expertly-crafted poems, with a white-hot lyric intensity and a narrative pull that becomes cumulative, an erotic veering toward doom. And yet, the persistence of longing is the life force, too, refusing to exhaust itself: How could anything in the universe be undying / when everything rushed forward, trailing light?

--Cecilia Woloch, author of Carpathia

Author: Lynne Knight
Publisher: Terrapin Books
Published: 07/08/2016
Pages: 102
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.24d
ISBN: 9780996987189

About the Author
Knight, Lynne: - Lynne Knight, a former fellow in poetry at Syracuse University, taught high school English in Upstate New York, and then moved to California where she taught at San Francisco Bay Area community colleges and began writing poetry again. She is the author of four full-length poetry collections and four chapbooks. Awards for her collections include the Quarterly Review of Literature Prize and the Dorothy Brunsman Award from Bear Star Press. Her work has appeared in a number of journals, including Kenyon Review, Poetry, and The Southern Review. Other awards and honors include publication in Best American Poetry, the Prix de l'Alliance Française 2006, a PSA Lucille Medwick Memorial Award, the 2009 Rattle Poetry Prize, and an NEA grant.