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In an era of downright lies fed on a diet of phoney baloney, John Knoll refreshes and elevates his poetry into prose of heart and soul and place. The Beat breaks through the Hippie facade and the voice of a practical realist tells you stories that, if you heard them read aloud, would make you explode with laughter, then wonder why you laughed. That’s true pleasure of John’s
writing stuck in the American landscape of the Kansas-New Mexico continuum. It’s the grit of the sand, the actuality of real people on the page, the insanity of the normal from a truly fully realized American poet/writer. Thank you John Knoll for Black Mesa Blues!
-Larry Goodell, Nothing to Laugh About
At once familiar and fantastic scenes unfold in John Knoll’s stories which lure you into a world of possibility and youthful hope with an ever-present odor of imminent failure. Spiritual symbols hover throughout, politically dystopian scenes unfold at the laundromat, acts of heroism play out often leaving redemption and disaster behind. These stories inhabit the feeling of unraveling empire and the ensuing instabilities that become commonplace in early 21st Century America: hopelessness, homelessness, and the ramifications of citizens sent to fight stupid unwinnable foreign wars. And still the bedraggled characters of this difficult landscape continue to pursue love, tenderness and the urge to create something approaching beauty.
Danny Rosen, Lithic Press
John Knoll’s new work brings us surrealism crossed with a Southwestern (yes, magical) realism. Stories of relationship and vision among a handful of characters lift easily from the mixed ethos at the heart of New Mexico. As colorful and folksy as a Rio Grande blanket and as cleanly wrought as an O'Keefe painting, this collection is a gift from one of New Mexico’s best poets.
-Anne MacNaughton
