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.