Books published by Indian Paintbrush Poets

John Knoepfle's latest book The Aloe of Evening is the best collection of poems you will read this year. Knoepfle [pronounced know-full] has command of our spoken language few writers will ever achieve. And he knows exactly where the golden thread of each poem is. His poems have both breadth and emotional depth. One poem within this book begins with sadness profound enough to make the reader cry, and closes with humor strong enough to make this reader laugh out loud. As early as the second poem cameo appearances are made by Horatio and Hamlet. Further into the book the poet raises a question about Shakespeare's second bed. He writes amazing lines here. In one poem "the world falls out of orbit"; in another clowns are "cartwheeling at some other circus." In a poem titled "What Happened to this Computer," he reveals his art by showing the reader word-by-word problems computers can cause, and we laugh because he is saying what everybody has felt. Here are the first two lines from "The Parade Has Ended," "How do you walk out of yourself / beyond the trail of words." Well friends, this book has poems about family, friends, remembrances, zany poems, dream poems, poems about aging, many are spiritual, and a few are about writing. I have been reading poetry books for 50 years. This is the best one I've read. But do not take my word for it. Buy this book! Read it aloud! Listen to the nuances spun into the language, and decide for yourself! -Victor Pearn

Stories abound in this book, and a river runs through it.The stories are random and recurring, like memory itself. Family history. A conversation struck up with an old man in a bar. A long ago Pony League team undefeated. A young marine walking in an empty baseball field in Oahu, reading his college acceptance letter. The stories, like the cue balls Pearn describes in another poem, touch each other and change trajectories.The river is the Poudre - born in the Rocky Mountains, eastern slope, flowing through Fort Collins. Pearn gives his readers its colors and its creatures in many lights and seasons. Like memory, it is a place to return to, a source of renewal.There is another force moving these poems, one not found so much in contemporary writing. Call it boundless hope. In his poem "Three Square Meals," Pearn says he "did not have the American dream" because he never wanted to be rich; he just wanted to be a writer. But the American dream is writ large in these poems - true grit and work and the possibility of glory in baseball fields and boot camp - and in poetry. Many of the poems in this book are conversations with poetry and poets that begin in a seventh-grade classroom and are now part of his outlook and his art. The American dream shines in Pearn's memories of Jacksonville, Illinois, in the good days of the 1950s and 60s when there was work in huge and colorful variety for anyone who was willing to do it. But he also tells some 21st centuries stories of hope and struggle. His wife, a recent immigrant from China, confronts the gulf between her education and the jobs available to her. They walk the bureaucratic maze in their efforts to bring her son to the United States.This is a book to read and return to.-Peggy Sower Knoepfle

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.

Ric Amezquita's Then She Kissed El Paco's Lips Now! Or April in DeKalb makes you wonder if you've entered another world, or perhaps have begun to see this one clearly for the first time. "Unknown is everywhere," he writes, calmly subversive. In whatever ways he inhabits these poems-as a bewildered Chicano kid in the Air Force; a woefully underpaid, traveling teacher; a bored-to-tears bureaucrat, Villista, curandero, and small-town sage-Ric is someone I want to ride along with, a man whose songs range from street corner cries of political outrage to lullabies of almost unbearable tenderness. These are poems noctambulous, dream pieces, icons of two sides and two languages and two places at once, toes that hold the world, songs of Chihuahua and cries of Nigeria, Jesus' last thoughts and snakes uroboros, goddesses of nourishment and cool corpses of Elvis - all originals set out by an original, a 'pilot, co-pilot, navigator, / nose, dorsal, waist, tail, ball turret-gunner / and now bombardier . . . Softly fall the balms of poetry - no need to duck and cover.This is Ricardo Mario Amezquita's first book. He is a poet that will become known rapidly!

Victor W. Pearn was born in 1950 in Jacksonville, Illinois and began writing poems at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii when he was 21 years old. He earned his BA from the University of Illinois, Springfield, and his English Literature MA in creative writing at Colorado University, Boulder. "One Year of Grace," won the 1983 university wide poetry contest, and was printed as the prologue in the 1984 Coloradan by Colorado University. He's the author of Devil Dogs and Jarheads, a collection of poems describing the culture of the U. S. Marine Corps during the war in Viet Nam, published by Michael Cooper, at Buscainc.com. And poems from that book have been read four times by Garrison Keillor on his NPR broadcast of "The Writer's Almanac." In 2009-2010 Mr. Pearn instructed eight freshmen English classes and six sophomore Writing classes, a total of 585 English majors, at Jining University located in Qufu, China. Currently, he resides with his wife Summer, where he continues writing and publishing books and poems in Colorado. Apricot Harvest, his twelfth book was written in China, and inspired by the contemporary Chinese culture, speaks from those experiences he had while living in Shandong Province from August 2009 to September 2010.