Untangling the Knots

In Buffy Aakaash's Untangling the Knots, we learn such essential skills as "How to Start a Fire," "How to Undress," and even "How to Pet a Cat." But we are given surprise after surprise, as we discover vivid metaphors for deeper life lessons. Even though the title promises untangling, the "necessary fettered entanglement" of love, desire and authentic living is what this collection celebrates. And it does so with heart, honesty, and imagination, the stuff of life and poetry. Even as he wears "the grief of [his] own unravelling" in these lovely poems, Aakaash finds "boisterous joy" and "true freedom" in ordinary moments and he invites the reader to do the same. This is a lovingly-crafted, hopeful collection of poems that can act as a balm for our troubled times.

-Maxima Kahn, author of Fierce Aria, teacher, and firekeeper



Here we are asked to "enter the entanglement" as Aakaash lays bare a poet's motivating purpose through a series of 'How To' poems that process and warn, as well as celebrate and rejoice, sometimes with a cat to pet, or a puppy to walk, or a goat to milk. These poems live life to the fullest; they "behold beauty / and follow the call..." With lyrical language and juxtapositions dripping with alliteration and rhythm, Untangling the Knots is a winning achievement in chapbook form. To read it is to enter a sacredness-an entanglement of love and grief, life and wonder, regrets and hope-where you will "make your own retreat / through quick forays into / forbidden places."

-Samantha Kolber, author of Birth of a Daughter



Untangling the Knots is a uniquely potent collection of sagacity that weaves ostensibly mundane pursuits into elegant tapestries of instruction that congeal and calm the complexities of being human in our natural world. With silky precision, the poems reach softly into our hearts and ask us to look deeply and with sanctified intention into the raw ingredients of our losses. Then, like the evening sun descending across a southwest mesa, the slipknot is gently pulled, and the golden moment is upon us. The finished product leaves a tantalizing taste in our mouths and a satiated feeling in our spirit.

-Standing Feather, author of A Glowing Pink