Shadows and Starlight

What's new in this book? What is new comes from being eighty-nine. There is a great freedom in these poems. They range at will from the mundane to the utterly mysterious and deeply spiritual. There are conversations with friends and a conversation about a malfunctioning alarm clock with the poet's son. The poet crosses boundaries. He breaks rules. Emotions shift. Galaxies appear and reappear. The angel of death comes up with a comment on the poet's work. There is advice from Santa Claus. What more could a reader require? The shadows are deep. The starlight is bright.

You will also find and enjoy Knoepfle's love of the words and rhythms of our daily speech -- and his way of laying a line on the page. It's all lower case, no caps except for the poet's "I," no punctuation, just the minimal clues so you can get the sound and sense. For Knoepfle, every line is a poem - in the way it sounds and in the way it stacks up with the others to create a surprise.

Born in Cincinnati in 1923, John Knoepfle has seen a lot of history. He's a Purple Heart Veteran; as a boat officer on an attack transport in the Pacific during World War II, he took part in the landings at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. As a young writer and teacher, he joined the Civil Rights movement and worked to build the Great Society. Since then he has written about the many places he has lived and visited - the people, the landscape, the stories, the hidden history, often illuminated by his Catholic faith. You will find all these things in this book.

John Knoepfle is the author of twenty-one books. His poetry has been published in many magazines and anthologies. His most recent works, Walking in Snow, a book of poems and I Look Around for My Life, an autobiography, were published in 2008 by Pearn and Associates.

Knoepfle is professor emeritus of literature at the University of Illinois-Springfield. His awards include fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts; as well as the Mark Twain Award for Contributions to Midwestern Literature from the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature; Author of the Year Award from the Illinois Association of Teachers of English; and the Literary Heritage Award from the Illinois Center for the Book. He lives in Springfield, Illinois, with his wife Peggy. More information can be found on his website: johnknoepfle.com.