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Complex Knowing
These poems send the reader on a journey into the hidden realm of the subconscious, where the sixth sense of knowing overwhelms the other five. Chris Katsaropoulos has written a collection of poems that turn words and phrases inside out, bringing forth the intricate truths that can be found within a frozen landscape, a lost tribe of warriors, a funeral cortege, or a chrysanthemum weathering a drought. The dark existential themes capture the uneven and inexplicable nature of the human soul as it tries to muddle through a world that sometimes seems designed to thwart every attempt to love, while at the same time filled with beauty and overflowing with life.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2014
183 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 1, 2014
‘Everything outside our little tube of limitation is more than we can ever hope to know’
Occasionally a diamond so settled in the crust of the earth can go unnoticed, perhaps lacking the light it requires to send dazzling prisms to the eyes of the chaotic mass of shufflers preoccupied with the instant gratification of technologies competing with the air itself for push-button attention. Such is the case with this mesmerizing collection of poems COMPLEX KNOWING by the Indiana writer Chris Katsaropoulos, a book so eloquent and brilliant that it requires time - that precious entity few seem to have saved for exploration of the arts - to explore this obvious treasure. It is related to the great works of literature - James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Solzhenitsyn, Dante Alighieri, Roberto Bolaño, Seamus Heaney, Proust, Kazantzakis, Kafka, William Blake, and Percy Bysshe Shelley are a few that come to mind. We have been dazzled by his novels ANTIPHONY and FRAGILE and the manner in which he seduces/invites the reader to explore our sixth sense – that extension of our thinking that enters the realm of the unconscious or dream state or feelings not accessible immediately to the other five senses. Reading Katsaropoulos it is obvious he believes a reliable critical course can be plotted by following a poetic sixth sense.
Chris Katsaropoulos' mind is so attuned to poetry, classical music, metaphysics, physics, science in general and man's search for meaning that his poems have passages, not unlike cadenzas in a piano concerto where the artist takes a pause from the orchestral score to expound on a note or phrase or thought that shows muscular and spiritual dexterity before returning to the work as a whole, that sing like few other poets can write. It is this gift that Katsaropoulos displays in this masterful work. One of the ways he accomplishes this is his apparent disdain for the confines of phrasing or punctuation or the manner in which he places his poems on the page: once the reader takes the time to read the poems aloud, the myriad levels of meaning surface – levels influenced by the life circumstances and experiences the reader brings to the poem. He writes as though a passing word or phrase or thought draws him to pen and paper and form that initial seed his imagination and stream of conscious sensitivity weave extraordinary images. He allows a certain ambiguity of thought that opens a passage for the reader to enter the creative process, introducing here and there phrases that may be read with several levels of meaning. Gently tucked into his poems are moments of strangely chosen rhyming words that adds to the mystery of the fluidity of what he is expressing. Make no mistake: once his individual poem is completed the thought process is there: it is the discovery of the process, that idea, that 6th sense place that is the joy of reading his work.
Chris Katsaropoulos knows what he's about: he has served in the roles of editor and publisher with such prestigious houses as McGraw-Hill, Pearson Prentice Hall and Macmillan, he has authored trade and technical books (some dealing with the Internet as business) and he and his wife founded Luminis Books after encountering out-of-body experiences. This is a collection of fragments not unlike the encounters we all face in life - moments that seem coincidental and unimportant at the time but which later lead to insights and even behavior changes completely unexpected. But most of all it is the serene beauty of his writing that mesmerizes and results in starting the book again once finished that proves this is a man of letters who has an enormous gift and future. Every reader will find favorites or different moments; the following touched my psyche:
NOTHING
Vastness sound across the void
There’s nothing left
To say or do
How
Much, when or where
Have never mattered
Thought began
The ceaseless toil of
A riven window gravely
Gone unless the lovely
Magic justice could
Prevail, until the feeling
Went
Away; I told him
Never to bare the
Heartaches lightly never
To hobble beyond or
Bind
Himself to appearance
Shivering bones or
Past-tense quarter note
Desires.
COMPLEX KNOWING is most assuredly one of the more important collections of poetry by an American writer to come before the public. And as much as his novels continue to be unique contributions to literature, we can only hope that he will pause frequently to offers poems such as these.
Occasionally a diamond so settled in the crust of the earth can go unnoticed, perhaps lacking the light it requires to send dazzling prisms to the eyes of the chaotic mass of shufflers preoccupied with the instant gratification of technologies competing with the air itself for push-button attention. Such is the case with this mesmerizing collection of poems COMPLEX KNOWING by the Indiana writer Chris Katsaropoulos, a book so eloquent and brilliant that it requires time - that precious entity few seem to have saved for exploration of the arts - to explore this obvious treasure. It is related to the great works of literature - James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Solzhenitsyn, Dante Alighieri, Roberto Bolaño, Seamus Heaney, Proust, Kazantzakis, Kafka, William Blake, and Percy Bysshe Shelley are a few that come to mind. We have been dazzled by his novels ANTIPHONY and FRAGILE and the manner in which he seduces/invites the reader to explore our sixth sense – that extension of our thinking that enters the realm of the unconscious or dream state or feelings not accessible immediately to the other five senses. Reading Katsaropoulos it is obvious he believes a reliable critical course can be plotted by following a poetic sixth sense.
Chris Katsaropoulos' mind is so attuned to poetry, classical music, metaphysics, physics, science in general and man's search for meaning that his poems have passages, not unlike cadenzas in a piano concerto where the artist takes a pause from the orchestral score to expound on a note or phrase or thought that shows muscular and spiritual dexterity before returning to the work as a whole, that sing like few other poets can write. It is this gift that Katsaropoulos displays in this masterful work. One of the ways he accomplishes this is his apparent disdain for the confines of phrasing or punctuation or the manner in which he places his poems on the page: once the reader takes the time to read the poems aloud, the myriad levels of meaning surface – levels influenced by the life circumstances and experiences the reader brings to the poem. He writes as though a passing word or phrase or thought draws him to pen and paper and form that initial seed his imagination and stream of conscious sensitivity weave extraordinary images. He allows a certain ambiguity of thought that opens a passage for the reader to enter the creative process, introducing here and there phrases that may be read with several levels of meaning. Gently tucked into his poems are moments of strangely chosen rhyming words that adds to the mystery of the fluidity of what he is expressing. Make no mistake: once his individual poem is completed the thought process is there: it is the discovery of the process, that idea, that 6th sense place that is the joy of reading his work.
Chris Katsaropoulos knows what he's about: he has served in the roles of editor and publisher with such prestigious houses as McGraw-Hill, Pearson Prentice Hall and Macmillan, he has authored trade and technical books (some dealing with the Internet as business) and he and his wife founded Luminis Books after encountering out-of-body experiences. This is a collection of fragments not unlike the encounters we all face in life - moments that seem coincidental and unimportant at the time but which later lead to insights and even behavior changes completely unexpected. But most of all it is the serene beauty of his writing that mesmerizes and results in starting the book again once finished that proves this is a man of letters who has an enormous gift and future. Every reader will find favorites or different moments; the following touched my psyche:
NOTHING
Vastness sound across the void
There’s nothing left
To say or do
How
Much, when or where
Have never mattered
Thought began
The ceaseless toil of
A riven window gravely
Gone unless the lovely
Magic justice could
Prevail, until the feeling
Went
Away; I told him
Never to bare the
Heartaches lightly never
To hobble beyond or
Bind
Himself to appearance
Shivering bones or
Past-tense quarter note
Desires.
COMPLEX KNOWING is most assuredly one of the more important collections of poetry by an American writer to come before the public. And as much as his novels continue to be unique contributions to literature, we can only hope that he will pause frequently to offers poems such as these.
July 29, 2014
Beautiful, contemporary and evocative. A true gem of a collection.
October 22, 2014
Luminous and intensely lyrical, Complex Knowing is a treat for all of the senses even as it transcends and takes you to somewhere exquisite. I'm sharing it with all of my friends!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews