Poetry

Read John's selected poems here and refer to the bibliography for a full listing of John's work.

  • Poems from the Sangamon

    • Read Confluence

    "The poet has named his country, his people, and now he names the stars. The morality of John Knoepfle's naming is that it not only rectifies, it also heals. Readers in need of such balm would do well to look long at John Knoepfle's poetry." —Anne C. Bromley

  • Rivers into Islands

    • Read Church of Rose of Lima, Cincinnati

  • Selected Poems

    • Read A Box of Sandalwood

  • A Box of Sandalwood

    • Read after gray days

    Read when the wound speaks

  • Begging an Amnesty

    • Read voices at breakfast #2

  • The Chinkapin Oak

    • Read a little song for a sugar cube

    "The variety of new subjects here, often midwestern, is only equaled by the sensitivity and tenderness with which Knoepfle utters them. Man and woman, memory and child, town and counselor, he more than ever sings of threads that unite our lives." —Ted Haddin

  • Prayer Against Famine and Other Irish Poems

    • Read lines for my mother

    "In this moving book of poems, John Knoepfle transforms a search for his Irish roots into a meditation on human suffering and survival. The whole book is a prayer against famine and the gratuitous cruelty inflilcted on the innocent, both the Irish of the last century, and the Central Americans of today." —Kathleen Norris

  • Walking in Snow

    • Read walking in snow

    "Whatever the journey has been, whatever it will be, whether we sit on a bench with old men or make footprints where there are none, John Knoepfle's own steady hands have drawn us a map that we are fortunate to have." —from "A Meditation of the Passage of Time: John Knoepfle's New Book of Poetry," by Carol Manley