What I Knew

by Eleni Sikelianos

A book-length poem that grapples with the global and the globalized, bringing urgently needed visionary reflection to our tumultuous world.

What I Knew engages activities and knowledge that can’t be mined or verifyed by search engines or easily surveilled. Sourced from poetry’s ancient materials of dream, memory, story, and experience, What I Knew aims to create a site of resistance to, and refuge from, our current overflow of information and fact checking, where private desires and whims cannot be commodified. It seeks alternative, personal forms of globalization rather than the public forms we know.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2019

About the author

Eleni Sikelianos is the author of six books of poetry, most recently The Loving Detail of the Living and the Dead, as well as a hybrid memoir, The Book of Jon. Sikelianos directs the creative writing program at the University of Denver.

Reviews

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this house I write I hope all is well
at email's end—Hope all is well
in the world
where this poem
takes place
in the tongue
that talks in the night
in the limits of knowledge
that knob the palate
the palace of language where I walk clothed
palace of world, walk naked
to put the words together
"violet" "violent" "eye" "to try"
to come right

—p59-60

[siena · Rating 5 out of 5]

a field guide for The Times and for the poet. i may be biased but i’m also right

[Trestan Matel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow

[Greg Bem · Rating 5 out of 5]

An epic of knowledge and an epic of experience, this book channels what it means to be vocal and what it means to be private, intimate, and aware of the expressions born from these spaces.