Sacred

This is my daughter Ava Elyse turning the pages of her cousin Kyle Knapp’s posthumous collection of poetry, Celebrations in the Ossuary. She got first look at the proof copy that arrived this week.

Kyle would play his guitar, and Ava would dance to the music he played. Her fascination with guitars started when she was just months old, watching for a still shot of an acoustic guitar pop up on the screen of the cable TV Jazz channel. We bought a mini acoustic guitar for her, and since neither her mom nor I can carry a tune let alone play a musical instrument, she was transfixed when Kyle played. We left Ava’s guitar there with him the last time that we saw him.

One time, my sister went to move the guitar out of the living room, but Kyle brought it back and placed it next to his. He told his mom it was “sacred” and the instrument needed to stay put—next to where he wrote, played music, and worked on his poetry.

There was a message on his twitter account from December 13, 2012, that read “learned to play all of Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Walk Away’ on baby Ava’s guitar this morning. lol couldn’t sleep.”

Thank you, Kyle, for loving my daughter, writing a poem for her we consider sacred. I should have Ossuary out, as promised, by your birthday.

Somewhere in Time

Grandma Sheila labeled the photo, "Somewhere in Time"
You know, the one of you and me standing along Fall Creek
Did she snap the pic, Kyle?
I really can't remember
I’m guessing I was home on leave from the Army
And you must have been, what, about seven years old?
Damn, look how young we were
And, no, I won’t allow myself to be sad
‘Cause I can hear you saying
“Those days will come again,
They were eternal, after all…”

Yesterday

Aaron Warner was Kyle Knapp's very good friend and is an outstanding poet in his own right. I'm super pleased to feature him at BEAT to a PULP this week with his poem, "Yesterday."

Thanks, Aaron.

Pluvial Gardens in Print

I know Kyle's smiling over Pluvial Gardens in print (CreateSpace and Amazon). A portion of the profits will go to, at his parent's request, Tompkins Cortland Community College where Kyle was working toward a degree in Social Sciences. I'm now in the middle of editing his second collection of poems -- Celebrations in the Ossuary -- and hope to have it completed by September 1st, in time for what would have marked his 24th birthday.

Vladimir Nabokov

A book left behind on the front seat of Kyle's car was Speak, Memory--an autobiographical memoir by writer Vladimir Nabokov. Of course, I knew of the prominent Russian author and his impact on the world of literature but had never read anything by him. I corrected that this week and am now five chapters into Speak. Immediately the book captured my attention with:

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."

I found a short interview with V.N., who died thirty-six years ago this week. The unusual clip caught me off guard with its 50's format (though oddly refreshing) and V.N.'s voice, but once I got past that, what he said about his most famous creation, Lolita, and his answer to, "Has sex become a literary cliché?" has me even more intrigued by this 20th century juggernaut. Onward I read.



Vladimir Nabokov discusses "Lolita" part 2.

Until It Sleeps

Revolving blue petals/Dim the soft silent rotting rooms. --K. Knapp

A Grim Week

It’s been an emotionally grim week. My nephew, Kyle Knapp, lost his life in a house fire. He had been living in the home I grew up in. I went back for the funeral service on Saturday and to be with my sister and her family. Try to find needed closure. But I soon realized it’s not to be, not yet, even though Kyle has told me, 'It’s ok, Uncle David.' It just hurts too damn much. Still, I can see the road ahead and what I need to do for him.

You see, Kyle sent me dozens of poems and several short stories over the last year following the release of Pluvial Gardens, and while the first collection of poetry is striking, what follows is ten-fold beyond. Kyle had begun digging deeper within himself and pulled up astonishing insight from his soul. I can’t even imagine where his art would have taken him as his writing continued to season over the next decade.

Now it’s my turn do justice to Kyle’s writing and get the next collection of poems out. I’m going to take my time and get it right. Kyle had said that having the Pluvial Gardens eBook published was the highlight of his life. That does my heart good. I want to get Gardens out in paperback very soon (something he had wanted) and begin doing inventory on just how much of a body of work Kyle left behind. I’ve found the first eight chapters of a novel he had emailed to me, unfortunately, I think the rest has been lost. But it’s a novel we had talked about, and maybe in time I can finish it for him.

I wish you had known Kyle. He was a wonderful, caring human being. Yes, there were times he was difficult, but he always came back to say, “Sorry, David.” It saddens me he didn’t conquer his alcoholism, but he touches on that in the unreleased poetry, and maybe, just maybe, it will help someone else. I plan to dedicate a significant portion of the sales of all his books to an organization that my sister feels Kyle would have wanted.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Kyle and I have some work to do.

Kyle Joseph Knapp 1989-2013

As I stepped with the blinded women, hand in hand to the wooden terrace
The clouds crawled from the waste like shimmering roses,
And the heather blushed in the snow, pale carmine to a pulse of opal.

I told her of the pluvial gardens
Of the terse white gloam
Of the rotting billows of ashen snow
That blow the silken frost of hemlock so cold
Swathed in a bower of magenta and stone.

My promise to you, Kyle, is that all your poems and short stories will be published. Goodbye for now.

Waiting to Finish Frank Bill's DonnyBrook

I was passing through New York--about two months back--when Donnybrook by Frank Bill arrived in the mail. I had just begun reading Bill's novel when I let BTAP-published poet Kyle Knapp borrow it with the idea that I'd pick it up again in four days time. Well, one thing led to another, and Kyle and I missed each other at the next junction ... and I still haven't finished Donnybrook, though I'm promised it is in the mail. Kyle posted a review on Amazon that reads:

An exemplary work of art; a raging bloodbath, that leaves you begging for more. 

Imagine Chuck Palahniuk reborn in a mental asylum to a hermaphroditic witch doctor and then loosed into the woods. He discovers there an abandoned library haunted by a ninja. Ok... maybe that's a bit much, but it is a good metaphor for what you're getting into! Frank Bill's novel has the spastic energy of a beating heart. I stayed up into the small hours night after night until it was finished, too eager to turn out the light. Friends borrowed the story jealous of who was ahead of them in line, as we all agreed that this novel was going to be the next hallmark of youth-run-amok. For a guy that grew up religiously watching Fight Club--and sneaking off into the night after a few beers with his friends to beat the hell out of each other... This is it! This is the next Holy Pyre of the Damned. Enjoy at the risk of falling in love on the battlefield!

Hell, wanna finish reading this in the worst way but have to wait for it to arrive in the mail, again!

Kyle Knapp Interview

Who are your primary influences and why?

I was originally influenced by the life of Jim Morrison when I began writing because he was the first character in my life, or in a book, or in history that I was able to naturally and genuinely identify myself with as a young man. After Morrison grew out of fame and pop culture, he walked around a lot anonymously; in gardens and mazes and throughout some of the most remarkable cities in the world. He was determined to live up to his own identification with the greatest of the poets. I believe he wrote about 1600 poems in his life, and I think eventually a clearer visage of history will deign to adequately respect his achievements in literature. I’ve thought that the identity of a poet (or of my conception of the life of a poet) was a blessed and noble ideal since I was very young ... and part of that was inspired by Morrison.

It wasn’t until I began to read Vladimir Nabokov, and soon after Arthur Rimbaud, that I began to appreciate writing (and literature) “in itself” and devoid of any relationship to the formation of an identity or to a philosophical ideal or something like that. A girlfriend had left Lolita at my house when I was seventeen and I was obsessed with the fey solipsism of the character Humbert Humbert. Not so much for his horrid affinities, of course; but, in order to imitate the genius of Humbert’s hand, I had to greatly expand my use of the English language. I wrote all the time and studied literature feverishly for a couple years after that, and I really learned to love the art of language. Rimbaud’s “A Season in Hell” is something that I came across in that time. It’s one of the most originally brilliant, eccentric and exciting articles that I have ever read in my entire life. I think I’ve read all of Paul Schmidt’s translations of Rimbaud by now, and I have to assent that I’ve been irrevocably inspired, and maybe even to an extent complimented by my postured fidelity to Rimbaud’s work.

Why write poetry? It is known to be a hard sale, and, with the exception of a few chosen, most poets would go hungry trying to make a living from it.

I never really thought about that until after I had been writing poetry for many years. When I began writing I was a teenager, and an idealist, and I remember being passionately determined to learn about different ways that I could survive and be happy without living by money. I don’t want to make a living as a poet as much as I want to perfect myself as a writer for my own private joys. I like poetry the most as a form of expression because of any of the art forms that I know of, it offers your audience the greatest degree of participation on the part of their own mind. And not just their active consciousness. A great poem can access thoughts and feelings that you may not have been aware you had. Pieces of your life that aren’t always current or held together. For example, a poem can return to you dreams that you will never remember but have shaped you forever, once long ago, and you may or may not know why. I think it’s fascinating, exciting, and important to provoke and expand your mind, and reading and writing poetry is a fantastic way to do that.

A lot of your poetry touches on nature and your fondness for it. Where does that come from?

It’s very hard for me to reminisce genuine moments of happiness from my life, and the few that I can afford are from a childhood replete with explorations and adventures in the forests. That and much of my early work was written by the side of a large secluded pond on my parent’s property.

What’s next on your agenda?

Well, my plan is to organize a few more volumes of my earlier work and get it out there so that I can focus on the creative element of writing again ... the fun part.

Kyle Knapp’s Pluvial Gardens, edited by David Cranmer, can be found here.