Inside the Heart’s Walls — poetry, 125 pages
printed in Columbia, South Carolina; usa — June, 2019
excerpts are the work and property of the author,
used without permission
O frabjous day, callou callay, a book of verse has come my way!
Nathan Tav Knight has an especial gift for constructing tight and rigorous works of rhythmcraft that are packed with evocative imagery. The author does not betray the reader with his choice of title, nor does he avoid risking embarrassment. Many of these pieces are personal and painful. There is as much of the maudlin as we might expect from a “slim volume of verse,” but there is also a sufficiently playful tone that would have supported selecting Two-Seater with the Top Down as his title piece instead.
We’re getting a bit of a range with this book. For comparison’s sake I would try to put the author in the same camp as cummings or Kipling or Seuss. Though some of his work is more “free form” most are strictly metered. Within these constraints Knight breaks free of convention, and illustrates lives of brilliant triumph, desperate struggle, joyous fellowship, rapturous solitude, and bitter loneliness. To wit, genuine and original lives. Probably mostly his own lives, though some might be invented.
Some personal favorites of this reviewer include:.
No Cigar (pg 6)
Such a thankful word is ‘close’
Injected with a potent dose
Of beaming joy and giddy cheer
Churned within from passing near
The zooming car or thund’ring truck
How great it feels to not be struck!
Just This (pg 67)
If love is a god then just who am I
To love ’til I break and make myself cry?
If we once were one then just who are you
To pull out our soul and tear it in two?
If life is just this then just who are we
To fall out of love and call ourselves free?
The Scarcity Principle (pg 69)
We see something as more desirable
Whenever it is less acquirable.
Love is so valued because it is rare.
Desperately hoarded, none free to spare.
The desire for love is forever connected
To always expecting of being rejected.
How magic to feel should a day countervail
That normalcy break and old order fail?
What puzzle, what mystery would then take shape?
How lost would we be in that strange new landscape?
Solitude and loneliness slug it out repeatedly throughout the collection. Scribes of all Ages have tackled this conflict, of course, and Knight sums up the difference: “Solitude is having the time and space to work on your project until you get it juuuuuust right. Loneliness is wishing you had someone to show what a good job you did.” As long as we admire his work then, according to his own metric, Knight surrenders at least some claim to “loneliness.” Meanwhile, we can wish for him all the solitude that writers crave, and regular breaks at his discretion, with liberal doses of whiskey, weed, women, or whatnot.
190710
Knight’s publisher has not seen fit to include contact information, but we are prepared to intercede on your behalf. We will endeavor to make hard copy available post paid from Greigh Area Associates or Piracy Press for Twenty United $tates Legal Tender Federal Reserve “Dollars” (U$LT) in check or money order, or One Silver Dollar. Send your U$LT to Gene Greigh, c/o Greigh Area Associates // 401 Rio Concho Drive, #105; San Angelo, Texas; 76903 (If we are unable to secure copies your instrument will be returned or like products will be sent at your discretion.)
update 190711: correspondent DD points out that Knight’s book is also available at Amazon.dot.com, but the link provided is a little intimidating (at least to this primitive e-tard), so caveat emptor!