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A Poem about Knitting

Creativity finds many avenues through which to express itself.  Some of us can use a paint brush, others are skilled with food, some use yarn and others, words.  My friend Jami, a poet in her own right, forwarded this poem.

Covers
by Kathryn Cowles

I learn to knit so I can knit covers for things, easy things at first covers for my hands covers for my feet for my head and neck soon I am making covers for friends as well I am adept at covering I cover handles on doors I cover the tops of pots, themselves covers, covered with knit yarn, I cover things for my daughter, small things, I make a cover for her eye and a cover for the eye of her doll I make a cover for her doll covering the whole thing except for the eye, for which I have already made a cover, I cover her dollhouse in great patches I connect the patches I am on a roll, I learn to knit in my sleep with the aid of a sleep knitting machine I cover my bed over and over again at night I become more and more adept until I can knit covers for myself as I walk, slow business to be sure but faster and faster for I find I need always to be covered everywhere I go so I knit the cover and trail it behind me to cover where I've been.

The author with her daughter

Kathryn Cowles must be a knitter.  She has expressed in words that obsession to knit that most long-time knitters feel.  It isn't always a constant, but it can be quite compelling at times.  One just must take those sticks and thread and do something with them.  I have tried to express this compunction in the past, but clear, accurate words to describe what it feels like to be compelled to create, escape me.  I'm wondering if Kathryn has the same type of experience in creating her poetry.  My hunch is she does and that is why this drive was so well written about in Covers.

The poem however takes a tangent as it ends.  There is a need to knit more and more covers during times of sleep.  The covers protect from being detected where the knitters' been during those night wanderings.  I enjoy this new line of approach and it takes the entire poem to a much more complex level.
Unattributed drawing, but I wonder if it is more handiwork of the author


In a recent biography Kathryn explains:  "My latest creative work explores contemporary ruins and the cities that house them (Detroit, Las Vegas) and often involves splicing photographs with words to produce hybrid texts in which visual and poetic elements are coequal forces. I'm also interested in poetry as a method of transcribing the stuff of the world and the ways in which types of language not thought to be poetic (the language of science, maps, guidebooks, or recipes) can contain lyric, transcendent moments."

Jami thanks for sending this poem to me.  It was a pleasure to try to better understand its meaning. I think I was able to scratch its surface and begin to follow its trail even if the cover was meant to obscure it.





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