Opening the Shutters

By Nan Knighton

THE GROWN-UP
This hand on my husband
is for being 13 and aching to be kissed
This flung open window
is for the smell of cafeterias and locker rooms
This lazing sleep till noon
is for logarithms at 9:00 a.m.
This house of rolling books
is for Miss Barge who shamed me for reading Salinger
These days of shutting doors when I need them shut
are for having to always LIGHT UP THE ROOM!
That gentle man on the ship who said You're beautiful
wipes out that boy in the car who shouted Hey, Ugly!
And this poem
is for my neighbor Rick, the lawyer, as he stood
in the check-out line at the grocery store,
watching a boy beg his mother for a Snickers
and when the mother's back was turned, he whispered
to the boy, I can have anything I want.

This poem is from Opening the Shutters, a book of poems by Nan Knighton which has been called extraordinary by author Delia Ephron, glorious by playwright Ken Ludwig, stunning by Richard Ridge of Broadway World and Elizabeth Goodenough says Her poems fly. They take risks...with arresting images, kick-ass verbs, hilarious dialogue and dramatic power. Brilliant. Knighton's poems are conversational, easily grasped. As she says, they are for those who say, I'm not really a poetry person as much as they are for poetry lovers. Her poems travel from drinking in a Manhattan bar to eating fried dough on a boardwalk, from dancing a tango to sitting on the floor of a coat closet during a thunderstorm, where the poet holds her frightened dog, and finds herself succumbing to the dark:
There are things to be said for the closet or the bed,
the warm cape of madness, always one breath away.

There are love poems, often beautiful, sometimes raw:
Love is a terrible, terrible thing.
It tosses us roses and flutes of champagne.
It waltzes and whirls us till we wonder where
we will land, but I'll tell you- it ain't lover's lane.

And there are asides to us, such as this one during a parental visit:
By the way, both my parents will totally outlive me.
I'll be dying, they'll be having Mint Juleps.

As Alfred Uhry, Pulitzer Prize winner for Driving Miss Daisy, says, Nan Knighton's poems celebrate the ebb and flow of everyday life. Opening the Shutters invites you to join this open, buoyant celebration.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1667821156
• ISBN13: 9781667821153
• Release Date: June 2022
• Publisher: Bookbaby
• Length: 134 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.6"