A Fretted Terrain, Like Mars

The title, A Fretted Terrain, Like Mars, refers to a deserted gravel parking lot of a popular bar at 4 a.m. These poems are wild, sensual, funny, wise, dancing, fretting, longing -- a travelogue of desire with rendezvous in cheap motels or the stratosphere, on mountain sides and deserts, in London and Paris. A couple learns the tango, a kite breaks its tether, a body speaks and its owner protests, a body breaks and somehow heals. The language is lush and surprising, the imagery rich and abundant.   Carol Lynne Knight is the co-director of Anhinga Press, where she designs covers and text, and edits books. She is the co-editor of Snakebird: Thirty Years of Anhinga Poets. She is the author of two book of poetry, A Fretted Terrain, Like Mars (Apalachee Press, 2020) and Quantum Entanglement (Apalachee Press, 2010). Her poetry has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Louisiana Literature, Tar River Review, Poetry Motel, Earth’s Daughters, The Ledge, Slipstream, Broome Review, J, Comstock Review, Northwest Florida Review, Epicenter, Redactions, Iconoclast, Epicenter, HazMat, So to Speak, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Cagibi, Rivet, Slink Chunk and in the anthologies Off the Cuffs (Soft Skull Press), Touched by Eros (Live Poets Society), The Poets Guide to the Birds (Anhinga Press), Beloved on the Earth, (Holy Cow! Press), and North of Wakulla (Anhinga Press). In other lives, she has worked as an art teacher, potter, videographer, and graphic designer. She lives in Tallahassee, Florida.   "Carol Lynne Knight’s A Fretted Terrain, Like Mars, is a lush evocation of a woman’s dance through her life — the romantic assignations in hotels and dilapidated houses to the full tango of a love affair in different cities and then the lone reckoning of the body and desire. The moon is the presiding goddess, or is it the phantasmagorical masks of a girl becoming a woman? This book is an unfurled fan — each slat a moment of beauty turning into a moving picture of love and loss. Knight’s images are rich and abundant as she offers up a glimpse of her place in time." — Barbara Hamby "Carol Lynne Knight’s A Fretted Terrain, Like Mars, is a travelogue of desire bound for Paris, Las Vegas, Savannah, Rome, and back again. Sexual intimacy and spirituality confront mortality head-on. Surely, Eros and Thanatos are both at play in these poems, but Eros gets the upper hand, and Knight’s eye for the indelible detail, her open-hearted approach, her lyricism and lush imagery, make so many of these poems unforgettable."  — James Kimbrell