The Garden of Verse: I'll Be Reading From My Two Poetry Books in Plymouth Next Month

           You're invited to a free poetry program at the Plymouth Public Library on Sunday, Dec. 9, at 2 p.m.

            I'll be reading from the poems in my collection, "Cocktails in the Wild," published earlier this year, and also from my previous collection, "Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty," which has recently been nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award.

            Refreshments will be offered and I'll do a book-signing after the reading.

            As we say in the newspaper trade, "Mark your calendar."

            Here's what the publisher, Unsolicited Press, said about "Cocktails":

            COCKTAILS IN THE WILD explores form wildly from couplets to long winding lines that swallow the reader up and transport them to a new place. A place for the senses. A place for the heart. Robert Knox toys with political and social conventions of today's modern landscape, and at the same time lets the reader revel in all of niceties of the natural world.

            See http://www.unsolicitedpress.com/store/p139/robertknoxpoetry.html

            ​Here's my description of the book's contents:

            The poems take us from a balcony in Beirut, a place of beauty, history and danger, to the grim seasons of the American 2016 presidential campaign. We place a phone call to India, view a squawking peaceable kingdom in Florida (mind the alligators lurking below), raise a glass in homage to Keats and Philip Larkin, and remember that the way things were is not a recipe for tomorrow, but a gateway to today. Let's walk through it to the wildness in ourselves.

            My previous book "Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty," published last year by Finishing Line Press, includes poems drawn from the experience of planting a perennial flower garden in a backyard in Quincy, Mass.   

            Here's an excerpt to the statement I wrote for the book's publisher:

            "Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty" includes poems about plants, flowers, the craft of cultivation, talking to trees, getting stared at by hummingbirds. Seasons change and so do we.

            The second half of the collection encompasses poems about family and places near and far, including my father's near-fatal journey in World War II ("My Dad's Ship But One of Three"), "The Sacred Way" at Delphi in Greece, Syrian refugees in Beirut ("Sidewalk Madonnas"), and a quick dip into formal verse with "The Slow Tritina." 

             See https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/gardeners-do-it-with-their-hands-dirty-by-robert-knox/

            The book was nominated for The Massachusetts Book Awards, a program of awards made annually to books by  Massachusetts residents published in the previous year.

            “The Massachusetts Book Awards," the program states on its website, "highlight the work of our vital contemporary writing community and encourage readers to do some 'close reading' of those imaginative works created by the authors among us."

            Plymouth Public Library is located at 132 South St. Again, the date is Sunday, Dec. 9, at 2 p.m. It's free.

            See you there.