Buy new:
$16.00$16.00
FREE delivery: Tuesday, Feb 14 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
Buy Used: $3.12

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.


Untying the Knot Paperback – May 5, 2014
Price | New from | Used from |
- Kindle
$7.95 Read with Our Free App - Paperback
$16.00
Enhance your purchase
—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
- Print length88 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateMay 5, 2014
- Dimensions6 x 0.2 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100615998984
- ISBN-13978-0615998985
"Write My Name Across the Sky: A Novel" by Barbara O'Neal for $6.45
The USA Today bestselling author of When We Believed in Mermaids returns with a tale of two generations of women reconciling family secrets and past regrets. | Learn more
Frequently bought together
- +
Product details
- Publisher : Aldrich Press (May 5, 2014)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 88 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0615998984
- ISBN-13 : 978-0615998985
- Item Weight : 5.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.2 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,535,903 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #62,398 in Poetry (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Karen Paul Holmes is the author of the poetry collections No Such Thing As Distance (Terrapin Press February 2018) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich Press 2014). She was named a Best Emerging Poet by Stay Thirsty Magazine in 2016 and received an Elizabeth George Foundation poetry grant in 2012. Her publishing credits include Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Crab Orchard Review, Poetry East, Atlanta Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology Vol 5: Georgia, among others.
Formerly the VP of Communications at a global financial services company, Karen is now a freelance business writer, poet, and “roving” writing teacher. She founded and hosts the Side Door Poets and a monthly writers' night out with an open mic.
www.karenpaulholmes.com
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
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.
She shares her journey gently and beautifully.
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.