These poems send the reader on a journey into the hidden realm of the subconscious, where the sixth sense of knowing overwhelms the other five. Chris Katsaropoulos has written a collection of poems that turn words and phrases inside out, bringing forth the intricate truths that can be found within a frozen landscape, a lost tribe of warriors, a funeral cortege, or a chrysanthemum weathering a drought. Each of these poems has the power to stop you in your tracks and transform what you thought you knew about the world inside you.
Reviews
"Katsaropoulos' collection is a poignant and necessary delivery of the most wonderful of human capacities, our ability to withstand the hurt and the joy."
--Mark Eleveld, Booklist
"These poems are illusive but very human, accessible and complex, cosmic and archetypal, a study in contrasts. Taking the time to understand them is the 'Rosetta Stone' for this collection, and the reader who searches will find a wealth of meaning and enjoyment."
--Sylvia Andrews, examiner.com
"Reading Katsaropoulos it is obvious he believes a reliable critical course can be plotted by following a poetic sixth sense... One of the ways he accomplishes this is his apparent disdain for the confines of phrasing or punctuation or the manner in which he places his poems on the page: Once the reader takes the time to read the poems aloud, the myriad levels of meaning surface - levels influenced by the life circumstances and experiences the reader brings to the poem."
"He writes as though a passing word or phrase or thought draws him to pen and paper and from that initial seed his imagination and stream of consciousness sensitivity weave extraordinary images. He allows a certain ambiguity of thought that opens a passage for the reader to enter the creative process, introducing here and there phrases that may be read with several levels of meaning."
"Gently tucked into his poems are moments of strangely chosen rhyming words that adds to the mystery of the fluidity of what he is expressing. Make no mistake: Once his individual poem is completed the thought process is there: It is the discovery of the process, that idea, that sixth sense place that is the joy of reading his work."
"This is a collection of fragments not unlike the encounters we all face in life - moments that seem coincidental and unimportant at the time but which later lead to insights and even behavior changes completely unexpected."
"Complex Knowing is most assuredly one of the more important collections of poetry by an American writer to come before the public. And as much as his novels continue to be unique contributions to literature, we can only hope that he will pause frequently to offer poems such as these."
--Grady Harp, poet - War Songs, critic - Literary Aficionado, art historian - The Art of Man, Vitruvian Lens, and PoetsArtists, writer for art museum catalogues
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