For six decades, John Knoepfle has been writing poems, and he's still going strong. Knoepfle writes love poems, among the best we have, of the joys, loneliness, danger and the infinite transformations of marriage. He writes narrative poems, surreal, sardonic and magical about astronauts on the moon or an angry farmer and a prophetic owl. He recovers the stories of folks who never made it into the history books. Always he has a respect for the spoken word and lays his lines out on the page so that you too can hear it. And a spiritual force runs through his books like the slow and powerful rivers of the Midwest he inhabits. Both moving and humorous, Knoepfle's autobiography shows us how by hard work and lucky accident he came to be the poet he is.

In these 112 pages, John Knoepfle eloquently celebrates themes that have engaged him as a poet for over half a century--life, love, and death. The best collection of new poems you will ever find. Walking in Snow, embraces us with wit, warmth, and affection, these luminous, intensely honest poems, testify to courage, tenderness, and the enduring wonders of nature.

What's new in this book? What is new comes from being eighty-nine. There is a great freedom in these poems. They range at will from the mundane to the utterly mysterious and deeply spiritual. There are conversations with friends and a conversation about a malfunctioning alarm clock with the poet's son. The poet crosses boundaries. He breaks rules. Emotions shift. Galaxies appear and reappear. The angel of death comes up with a comment on the poet's work. There is advice from Santa Claus. What more could a reader require? The shadows are deep. The starlight is bright. You will also find and enjoy Knoepfle's love of the words and rhythms of our daily speech -- and his way of laying a line on the page. It's all lower case, no caps except for the poet's "I," no punctuation, just the minimal clues so you can get the sound and sense. For Knoepfle, every line is a poem - in the way it sounds and in the way it stacks up with the others to create a surprise. Born in Cincinnati in 1923, John Knoepfle has seen a lot of history. He's a Purple Heart Veteran; as a boat officer on an attack transport in the Pacific during World War II, he took part in the landings at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. As a young writer and teacher, he joined the Civil Rights movement and worked to build the Great Society. Since then he has written about the many places he has lived and visited - the people, the landscape, the stories, the hidden history, often illuminated by his Catholic faith. You will find all these things in this book. John Knoepfle is the author of twenty-one books. His poetry has been published in many magazines and anthologies. His most recent works, Walking in Snow, a book of poems and I Look Around for My Life, an autobiography, were published in 2008 by Pearn and Associates. Knoepfle is professor emeritus of literature at the University of Illinois-Springfield. His awards include fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts; as well as the Mark Twain Award for Contributions to Midwestern Literature from the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature; Author of the Year Award from the Illinois Association of Teachers of English; and the Literary Heritage Award from the Illinois Center for the Book. He lives in Springfield, Illinois, with his wife Peggy. More information can be found on his website: johnknoepfle.com.

"Regional poetry at its best, where the strongly articulated local voice slips easily, persuasively, and movingly into the universal." -- J. R. Willingham, Choice "Uses the history and prehistory of the Sangamon river valley as his subject matter; the poems are laconic, earthy, full of sharply observed details, and are rendered with a flair for common speech." -- Library Journal "Knoepfle has long been misunderstood and underestimated among U.S. poets. . . . poems from the sangamon, his finest single collection to date, celebrates the Sangamon country around Springfield." -- Charles Guenther, St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Captures without nostalgia a time and a people in their essences, embodying their raw emotions, their dreams, and the bitter realities of being caught up in the twentieth century." -- Anne C. Bromley, Prairie Schooner