Artist and Poet
confluence
the suns eye gleams on the burnt black prairie
the winter blackened moraines of all conclusions
and the white egret
ascetic alone with his promise
knowing where the river is
threads a fiery needle
it was always more than dawn
that we looked for
something that we had not seen
as we watched here
gathered from the ashes of our vision
may new prayers and new fires
the beloved pleiades
welcome the kickapoo home
star daughters in their hoods of light
dancing at their zenith while the sun
burns down the horizon
this world in peace
this laced temple of darkening colors
it could not have been made for shambles
this green twilight of echoing voices
as the sun hurls its fireball
down the other side of the world
it is long miles through marshgrass
the sangamon sifting to its ending
and beyond us the illinois
intensifies south
beneath the eagles at grafton
our ancient mississippi
its wide slow waters
"Writing Poems is hard human work. It is a matter of many failures and of successes that must be seriously qualified. I write poems because this is what I am able to do. In my poetry I try to reflect a common quality that I have found in persons as diverse as Ohio River raftsmen and expatriate professors. This quality does not reveal the aesthetically beautiful or the diamond-like intellectual fireworks that man is capable of, but it does reveal something basic and handsome about him. I like this handsomeness, and I try to discover it again in my poems."
John in the Illinois wetlands
"I would consider John Knoepfle one of those classic poets of place. His attachment to the
midwest is a genuine attachment; it is the place that he inhabits, rather than writes
about, and that is what makes the poems so lovely. I think it has to do with his sense of
relationship of place to person to word."
—Brooke Bergen
About John
John Knoepfle is the author of over 20 books of poetry as well as several prose pieces. He 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. Click here to read
...more about John
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