Tag: Julia Caroline Knowlton

Two Poems by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Meditation

March colors stain
perfumed air—

pink tulip magnolia,
ivory dogwood, fuchsia azalea.

Abundance blossoming
in a dark arch of rain.

Within this wet darkening
cries an unseen blessing.

In every hidden bird singing
dies my every word.

*

Getting Older

I am becoming a dappled thing.
Silver threads my hair,
dark spots dot my body
like a speckled egg.

Floaters cloud my vision,
meandering opaque grey
in the tiny sky of my eyes.
My ears ring with a song of demise.

A great poet (immortal)
once praised this color palette—
mottled, rose-stippled,
time’s upstream beauty of change.

I can seed a pieced field
with one odd word.
I feed on instinct, on dream.
I am spare and strange.

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton PhD MFA is the author of five books. Recognition for her poetry includes an Academy of American Poets College Prize and a 2018 Georgia Author of the Year award. She is also a nominee for a 2022 Georgia Author of the Year award. KELSAY BOOKS will publish her third chapbook, LIFE OF THE MIND, in 2023. Julia teaches French and Creative Writing at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta.

haiku by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Paris catacombs
skulls arranged in big heart shapes
love even in death

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton PhD MFA is a poet and Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. Recognition for her poetry includes an American Academy of Poets College Prize and a 2018 Georgia Author of the Year award. She is the author of four books. She is writing a new book of poems in the form of biographical sonnets.

Everything’s Rosy by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Everything’s Rosy

               Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)

Her preferred lipstick color was “Everything’s Rosy”
by Revlon, her favorite makeup brand. Polio weakened
her body at age six. At eighteen she was a passenger on
a bus that collided with an electric trolley car in Mexico City:
an iron handrail impaled her pelvis “the way a sword pierces
a bull.” She sustained a punctured uterus and thirty broken bones.
A fellow passenger was traveling to the National Theater
carrying pure gold leaf; the impact of the collision scattered
flecks of gold all over Frida’s devastated body. Nothing was rosy.
She said, “I now live on a painful planet, transparent as ice.”
Frida adorned herself with traditional dresses and regal coiffures
from a matriarchal Oaxaca society. A lone vision in her own Eden,
she dreamed and consumed fiery alcohol and painkillers to excess
while spider monkeys and vines climbed her gold-flecked soul.

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton PhD MFA is a poet and Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. Recognition for her poetry includes an American Academy of Poets College Prize and a 2018 Georgia Author of the Year award. She is the author of four books. She is writing a new book of poems in the form of biographical sonnets.

Alone in Verona by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Alone in Verona

I love you but did not invite you here.
I chose to come here alone
with only impressions of us,
inner pictures that win out
over the star-crossed real.
In my mind are unseen frescoes,
emotion ground fine
into the plaster of thought—
burnt umber, blue, ochre of rose.

I love you but did not invite you here.
Why do I insist on this dizzying dream?
This lonely dizzying dream—
footpaths made of pink marble
scents of espresso & leather
the ancient ringing of bells
the iron lantern of exile
robed statues watching the dead
the dead cut out into little stars
speaking to everyone everywhere here

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton MFA PhD is Professor of French at Agnes Scott College, where she also teaches creative writing. The author of five books, she is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets College Prize and a 2018 Georgia Author of the Year award. She regularly publishes her poems in journals such as thimble, One Art, and Rust & Moth. One of her poems will be publicly installed outdoors in 2022 as a part of the GA Poetry in the Parks project.

Postcard from Paris by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Postcard from Paris

Paris is a paintbox of love’s dark mystery and light.
Its bridges and lanterns, its wrought iron balconies
and pale rose moon on the Seine—all of it communicates
a feeling that transcends time but not place, like a desire
for someone you have never met. No wonder artists
flock here like birds instinctively finding their way home.
I was lovesick for Paris even before I ever came here.
Like any grand amour this city will seduce you, charm you,
challenge and bewilder you. Don’t worry about wearing or saying
the right thing here. You do belong. We all belong.
Walk along the river, look at art, sit for a while in cafés and parks.
Breathe in the scent of this city, a mixture of expensive perfume,
butter, cigarette smoke and soot. Watch the sun sink pink and low,
listen to creaking wooden shutters concealing lives you cannot know.

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton MFA PhD is Professor of French at Agnes Scott College, where she also teaches creative writing. The author of five books, she is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets College Prize and a 2018 Georgia Author of the Year award. She regularly publishes her poems in journals such as thimble, One Art and Rust & Moth. One of her poems will be publicly installed outdoors in 2022 as a part of the GA Poetry in the Parks project.

Learning Italian by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Learning Italian

I leave my Ohio English, native tongue,
its lockstep clip-clop like horse hooves

on a road, its one syllable words like
birds on a wire or fruit pie in a pan.

I learn chiacchierare—to chit chat—
admiring how the letters pirouette.

Pure music subsumes me—alba, oro,
fruttivendolo, verdurivendolo.

I fade innamorata in wonder within
curved waves of gold leaf words formed

like drapery in stone or scrolls of violins.
Now perne in a gyre, blue turn I disappear.

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton PhD MFA is a poet and Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. The author of five books, she was named a Georgia Author of the Year in 2018. Her 2005 memoir, Body Story, was named an outstanding title by the American Library Association. Victoria Chang, the current New York Times Magazine Poetry Editor, has described Knowlton’s poetry as “devastatingly lyrical.” Recognition for her work includes an Academy of American Poets Prize and a Pushcart nomination. She regularly publishes her poetry in journals such as One Art and Trouvaille Review.

Amour by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Amour

I am a pebble tossed
      at the bottom of a well,

flame to a moth, both
      fire & cold faith.

I came here last & lost
      my mind undressed,

holding one stone wish
      in hand. I stay here still

one stone wish in hand,
      dusty song to dusty wing.

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton is Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta and incoming President of the Georgia Poetry Society. She has an MFA in poetry from Antioch University and a PhD in French Literature from UNC-Chapel Hill. The author of four books and an Academy of American Poets prize winner, she was named a Georgia Author of the Year for her 2018 chapbook, The Café of Unintelligible Desire (Alice Greene & Co.). Her second chapbook, Poem at the Edge of the World, will be published by Alice Greene & Co. in 2022. Julia regularly publishes in journals including One Art, Roanoke Review, and Boston Literary Review.

Two Poems by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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November Song

Praise gray skies, wet yellow
leaves fall to red edge. I wonder

why dark winter moves voices
to fear every day, every night

of the dead. How hard we try
to cover fear with wrong things—

hot meat gravy, a fat gold watch,
words of wool, light cheer.

November song, empty me out
to cloth without paint, barest

branches, a cup without wine.
Move me to snow on evergreen pine.

*

Meditation in Winter

I draw an angel halo on paper,
believing only in paper

not the gold shape itself.
I light candles with a red-hot match.

I sing a bitter song or sweet,
peel apples into butter and taste the past.

I write faint words, wash a dish.
Enter crying darkness coming at last.

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton is Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta and incoming President of the Georgia Poetry Society. She has an MFA in poetry from Antioch University and a PhD in French Literature from UNC-Chapel Hill. The author of four books and an Academy of American Poets prize winner, she was named a Georgia Author of the Year for her 2018 chapbook, The Café of Unintelligible Desire (Alice Greene & Co.). Her second chapbook, Poem at the Edge of the World, will be published by Alice Greene & Co. in 2022. Julia regularly publishes in journals including One Art, Roanoke Review, and Boston Literary Review.

One Poem by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Self-Portrait with Loss of Appetite

 

The crux of it is, who does not want to glide

through space, light—to enter like a dancer,

exit like a gold autumn leaf, float away?

 

Winter hunger always roving in my mind.

Hidden brush strokes, silver on snow falling.

This angel bone haunting, an absence I must find.

 

*

 

Julia Caroline Knowlton is Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. She has an MFA in poetry from Antioch University and a PhD in French Literature from UNC-Chapel Hill. The author of four books and an Academy of American Poets prize winner, she was named a GA Author of the Year for her 2018 chapbook, The Café of Unintelligible Desire (Alice Greene & Co.). Her second chapbook, Poem at the Edge of the World, will also be published by Alice Greene & Co. Julia regularly publishes in journals including One Art, Roanoke Review, and Boston Literary Review.

Moon by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Moon

Enough already about it, a poetry professor

once said. There is no room for the moon

in poems anymore. The idea being it has

all been done before. Undeniably true.

I tried the advice, writing about waves, ill fate,

petals like bells, eyes & lies, secrets to confess—

all other things that have fully been said.

Then last night, early spring, getting late,

trees black & still bare, you held me hard

in your arms. We were one, lit by it, entirely unknown—

full pearl button, huge sequin sewn in night’s lace dress.

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton is Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, where she has taught for twenty-five years. She has a PhD in French Literature from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MFA in Poetry from Antioch University. The author of four books, she was named a Georgia Author of the Year in 2018. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets College Prize and a Pushcart nominee. Her work has recently appeared in literary journals such as Boston Literary Magazine and Raw Art Review. You can find her on Facebook.