He Puts on His Poker Face

Sharon Waller Knutson's thirteenth poetry collection, He Puts on His Poker Face, is both a love letter to her husband Al and a memoir exploring eight decades of vibrant life experiences. The narrative poem are imbued with joie de vivre and humor. Knutson's husband tells her, "Don't write a poem about me," and she responds, "Who else would I write about? . . . Everyone else is gone." In the poem, "On Netflix, We Watch Walt, the Wyoming Sheriff," television presents the poet with memories, but reassuringly she and her husband "still sing, sway and swing / like we did three decades ago / even though our joints creak / and our voices crack." He Puts on his Poker Face is a stunning look at a well-lived life and a remarkable love story.

Luanne Castle, author of Our Wolves and Rooted and Winged

To say Sharon Waller Knutson knows her way around words is a grave understatement. Her tales of life in the desert, life in the '50s, life with family, and life as a woman will pierce your heart, steal your breath, spark your memories, make you laugh, and make you say-repeatedly-"Oh, just one more page..." He Puts on His Poker Face is an up close and personal look at Sharon's life with her husband, Al: the happiness, the heartache, the mundane, the unexpected, the aging, the adjustments and, through it all, the love.
Jayne Jaudon Ferrer, founder/editor of Your Daily Poem

Sharon Waller Knutson's new collection invites you to a celebration full of food, friends, and family, great characters and great stories. These poems engage the reader with their honesty-humor and with all part of life's great panorama-like the wild creatures the poet enjoys watching in her 80's from her home in the Arizona desert-where coyotes and bobcats "need to eat" just like the "bad boys" caught stealing a motorcycle by her mother. Knutson's memories resonate with our own, as we enjoy her lunch at Woolworths, grieve with her for Patsy Cline, and are proud she won first place in a Jacqueline Kennedy lookalike contest. Each poem here is itself a celebration to savor, full of energy and love of a life well and joyously lived.


Mary McCarthy, author of How to Become Invisible