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Untying the Knot Paperback – May 5, 2014

by Karen Paul Holmes (Author)

21 customer reviews

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Turning back toward the past, to reckon with and reclaim it, this book seeks to untangle memory. On its surface, Untying the Knot is about severance—about leaving the beloved behind and, likewise, getting left—but it is also a meditation on the sources of love and language. “It’s a comfort / to imagine our rounded bones / becoming round bits of the globe / our spirits rising to orbit among spiral galaxies / joining those who completed the circle before us,” writes Holmes, whose voice pushes readers forward into the unknown with confidence, precision, and empathy.
—Dorianne Laux, author of The Book of Men and Facts About the Moon
These poems are poems about the pains of a broken marriage. About half the people who have ever been married would be eligible to write on the subject, but very few, if any others, could do it with such grace, humor, self-awareness, and without a dollop of self-pity, as Karen Paul Holmes has in Untying the Knot. This is a courageous deeply human book.
—Thomas Lux, author of Child Made of Sand and God Particles
In Karen Paul Holmes’s Untying the Knot, betrayal and sorrow are recontextualized into an acknowledgment of the transitory nature of relationships and the capacity to find joy through language. Indeed, in this work, one that dignifies a sadness so many feel, “a spark ignites the dry leaves” in lucid and radiant ways, creating poetry that not only enriches us, but possesses the potential to teach us ways to navigate and ultimately transcend the difficulties of divorce and the feelings of loss and grief such division engenders.
—William Wright, series editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, author of Night Field Anecdote and Bledsoe

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About the Author

Karen Paul Holmes has an MA in music history from the University of Michigan. She eventually moved south and worked her way into a career that involved her love of writing: She became Vice President-Marketing Communications at ING, a global financial services company. Karen is now a freelance writer and owner of two naughty Welsh Terriers.
Karen founded/hosts the Side Door Poets group in Atlanta and Writers’ Night Out in the Blue Ridge Mountains. In 2012, she received an Elizabeth George Foundation emerging writer grant for poetry. Her publishing credits include a number of journals and anthologies, including Poetry East, Atlanta Review, Main Street Rag, Caesura, POEM, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, American Society: What Poets See (FutureCycle Press), and the Southern Poetry Anthology Vol 5: Georgia (Texas Review Press). You may contact her through her web site: www.simplycommunicated.com.

Paperback: 88 pages
Publisher: Aldrich Press (May 5, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0615998984
ISBN-13: 978-0615998985
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.2 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 6.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 21 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,724,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #59655 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry

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Denise C. Buschmann

Wonderful. Her words tugged on me to keep going ...

January 9, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I read her book last night. Could NOT put it down. Wonderful. Her words tugged on me to keep going so I could feel the full impact of her story. And, she did not disappoint. Was not expecting to see her in a, possibly, better place at the end, and that lent the element of surprise, which was rewarding. An impression, after reading, was inferring that her husband hadn't been honest with her for a long time—as if she’d had a slow-forming pimple finally expunged. Afterwards, things, though painful at first, got better. Her technique of showing all the raw emotions of an intimate betrayal, without blaming, brought me to my knees. Bravo! I recommend this book to anyone who has experienced a gut-wrenching betrayal and needs to see a way through it or any poet or writer who wants to learn to write well.

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Raymond (Bud) Simmons

Review of Untying the knot by Karen Holmes

May 29, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I purchased from Amazon "Untying The Knot" by "Karen Paul Holmes"
There are some of us out there in the world that savor poetry as much as life itself and if you like me, are one of those, or even one who enjoys the written word I would highly recommend Karens book.

It has been said that a true artist has the gift of expression in his /her ability to show it in their work.This is a brilliant anthology of a journey through life that navigates the reader into their own past experiences, her poetry has taken no less than life itself for a stunning reflection.

These poems tell the story of heartbreak and life's poison arrows that all of us at one time or another had to endure as the price tag for life itself, poems such as "To she who will not be named" "shoulda, woulda, coulda, "And so it comes to this." to say are compelling and griping is an understatement.

Together they all reflect the story of a woman who walked through the fires of a divorce, loss, betrayal, and despair only to rise with an Inner Strength that appears available only when all else is gone.

I have found this book as inspiring as its author and could recommend it as a great study guide for your book club, or support group.
It would also make a wonderful gift to anyone on the road back, and certainly a great read with your morning coffee.

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L. M.

A journey of healing... for author, and reader

August 14, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

What a wonderful experience. To be with her through the pain, and the healing... and the being healed.
She shares her journey gently and beautifully.

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S. Diane York

deeply moving and packed with raw emotion

June 19, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This book is best read cover to cover. It is easy to read and at times painful and deeply moving.

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Speaking to deep pain

April 30, 2015

Format: Kindle Edition

When is a marriage like a knot?

Karen Paul Holmes is the author of "Untying the Knot: Poems," a collection of 49 poems published in 2014 addressing a range of relationships but focused on the crumbling and dissolution of a marriage. These poems speak to deep pain, the emotional anguish that strikes at one’s very being when what one accepted as the given in one’s life becomes the taken away. The title poem, placed about halfway in the collection, talks of recriminations and the personal guilt that the victim in a failed marriage can experience.

Untying the Knot

Why do knots form by themselves?
In my blow dryer cord,
cell phone charger,
dog leashes.
What Boy Scout crept into the dark
to practice right over left
around and through?
And what of the sheepshank of worry
in my stomach,
muscles tied tense with monkey’s fists,
hair tangled in little nooses?

The twists and hitches in our relationship—
who caused those?
Should I have jumped
through one more hoop
to tighten our ties,
looped my love around up
one more time?
Like a rope,
our marriage failed at the stress of a knot
and frayed at the bitter end.

The questioning becomes anger and self-defense. The anger in these poems emerges almost naturally, fueled by the betrayal of not only a husband but also by a best friend. The poet tries meditation retreats, writing hate letters, self-incrimination (“if only I had…”), even imagining a reality show for saving marriages. But eventually it comes to sitting at a mahogany table, signing papers. The poet doesn’t achieve internal peace, but she does eventually reach a kind of resolution.

Holmes has an MA degree in music history from the University of Michigan but lives in Atlanta, After serving as vice president of marketing communications for ING, the financial services company, she became a freelance writer – and a poet. This is her first collection.

The poems of "Untying the Knot" are painful in their honesty and candor. The knot indeed unravels, leaving – an untied knot.

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Rebecca J. Foust

Honesty, Pluck and a Wonderful Kind of Hope

August 31, 2015

Format: Paperback

How to tell an old, old story of love and betrayal in a fresh way that avoids cliché? 1/use modern idiom and pop culture references; 2/put your narrative into the mouths of other characters, say, the ex-BFF who stole your ex-husband; 3/use vivid and artful figures of speech, like a simile that compares you to a sister whose grief made her into a symbol for an entire village; 4/ use word craft and word play to wring the most out of your language, and 5/ tell your experience without flinching, including your feelings about it.

In Untying the Knot, Poet Karen Holmes writes about the breakup and aftermath of a 30+-year marriage in poems that laugh, cry, ache and make precise observations on inner and outer landscapes. As the book unfolds, its speaker moves through shock, anger and grief to a place of quiet strength, redacting the boilerplate phrase “as if the marriage / never occurred” from a divorce document, somehow finding a way to feel compassion for her cheating ex-, and figuring out that untying the knot can have positive as well as negative consequences. What you won’t find here is self-pity or false bravado. But you will find honesty, pluck, and a wonderful kind of hope that allows the author to transcend rage and despair to observe that “since the impossibly bad / had the audacity to happen, / then it’s possible / the impossible good / will show up soon.”

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Most recent customer reviews

Amazon Customer

Understanding a painful process in the best way

Understanding is not a passive verb, and it is not a lazy noun. As humans, we crave it, demand it, and often pretend we’ve got it or we’ve done it.Read more

Published on December 12, 2015

Tina

Poems foranyone who has ever loved and lost

Karen Paul Holmes does the impossible: writes about being victimized without sounding like a victim.Read more

Published on November 30, 2015

A. Wise

a meaningful journey through the grief process

While my own experience of divorce was different from the author's, I marveled at her ability to give voice to the deep and wide range of emotion and awareness she traversed from...Read more

Published on May 16, 2015

Amanda Kenyon

Karen has a wonderful ability to weave together her experiences from one poem ...

Karen has a wonderful ability to weave together her experiences from one poem to another with sorrow, humor, and insight.Read more

Published on October 16, 2014

Black Stone Woman

... grive and the climbing out of the hole to happiness. All of this recorded very creatively through her ...

A very human story of one person dealing with the hits from life and the process she undertook to grieve and the climbing out of the hole to happiness.Read more

Published on July 11, 2014

Rosemary Royston

Untying the Knot could have easily slipped into the cliché

Untying the Knot could have easily slipped into the cliché, due to its subject matter: divorce. Yet Holmes shares pain and healing without being trite. Is she hurt?Read more

Published on July 9, 2014

Diana Anhalt

Divorce Step by Step

After more than thirty years, Karen Paul Holmes’ marriage terminated in divorce. "Untying the Knot, "a collection of some forty-nine poems, is her account of the road she...Read more

Published on June 22, 2014

Joan Howard

Triumphing Over Divorce

Karen Paul Homes' book rivals Sharon Olds' Stag Leap in its brutal honesty, poignant poetic imagery and drama. She is more humane than Olds and far more sympathetic.Read more

Published on June 20, 2014

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Untying the Knot Paperback – May 5, 2014

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