I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little
Coming March 5, 2026 from Green Writers Press…
Set among the oak-dotted hills and granite heights of northern California, I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little distills moments of communion with the natural world into spare, lilting language. The poems traverse ordinary days and periods of loss; they are elegy and wish. They examine motherhood and daughterhood and turn to the living land as source of solace and nurturing. Each poem reaches for reverent wakefulness, “to attend / to know how shadows move as sun shifts / to notice every fiddlehead who rises, startling.”
"I read I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little in two mesmerized sittings and never got over how, in the sorrows of Krissy’s poems, and in their joys, there is equal grandeur. She finds ways to make dread and loss so beautiful it infuses her fears with a fearlessness. Her attention to wildness is exquisite, and embraces opposites without hesitation. To do this full justice I can only quote her: “we are mighty / we are small” “you are known / more than you know” “she will live with tender abandon / until she dies” “an oak / cannot exist / without a star” “I offer myself to you / in the dying grass” “we are such dust / as greens the eons / and our little life is grounded/ in the deep” “the prayers of ages / bide still in the trillium / including mine for you.” This is sheer mastery, and in a first book! I’ll be reading Krissy with elation for as long as I last."
- David James Duncan, author of Sun House, The Brothers K, and The River Why
Early praise…
"In her first poetry collection, I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little, Krissy Kludt loiters on words that would have us stop and look down to see the smallest thing, even as sylvan giants with their boughs in the clouds loom lyrically overhead. This read is a wonderfully meandering wander through places and people. Consider every word in this collection a brightly-hued salamander discovered beneath green moss-covered log, then, leaving it in the safety of the surrounding words, saunter on to the adjoining lines and pages to see the next thing crawling, flying, or rooted deep in the earth Kludt so abundantly loves. Family is her undeniable taproot, but wildness is her leaves and needles and dancing prairie grasses, bartering breath for life: human, bird and all manner of wild beasts alike. This collection, long overdue but right on time in a world needing wild peace and love, proves true to the task of providing both. Take it with you when you walk. Read it aloud by the water and hear her voice."
-J. Drew Lanham, author of Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves, Sparrow Envy, and The Home Place
“Krissy Kludt’s I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little evokes a special feeling as you read her delightful collection, akin to a deep breath of petrichor; the scent of freshly damp earth after a long dry spell. Her poems rehydrate and enliven a sense of reverent curiosity for us readers. I have long been anticipating this volume, having followed her work with Writing the Wild for years. These poems have palpable texture and sprout hope in a time of significant transformation.”
-Rowen White, Akwesasne Mohawk author and seedkeeper
“There’s a ghost in this book, a ghost with eyes pried open to the living and dying world, a home place far too precious and mysterious for exile. I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little offers us an assured voice and guide to a pilgrimage of paradox, of loss and levitation, breath steaming the glass of the page, lungs afire followed by exhalation. We’re held in Kludt's psycho-spiritual tidal charts, held in suspension with metered awe, held there in every line to court and court again some desire for emptiness, and yet constantly filled up with birds and sky and grief and the relentless animacy of a world too old and gorgeous and stimulating to ever look away. Overwhelm and release, mountain and me, and the unending hills between. I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little whispers from these hills, this interstitial knowing: there’s still abundance here, right here, even amid the crush. There’s an invitation from some god, or ghost, that demands for our attention, longs for a love that endures only if we let it in. Kludt’s new collection—which I’ve now dog-eared most of the book—reminds me at every turn: what we let in breathes shape to our heart. Surrender to that, and be held.”
-Nicholas Triolo, author of The Way Around
"If I could somehow read this book with my eyes closed, hand over my heart, I would. Kludt’s words bring you to complete stillness, poetry wrapped up as a gift in images and embodiments that carry us far from wherever we are and deeper into ourselves at the same time. Read this book, and let her words walk you home to your own sacred belonging."
-Kaitlin B. Curtice, award-winning author of Native and Everything Is a Story
“Krissy Kludt's I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little has become a daily companion for me, her poems both timely and timeless, as if chiseled from stone. This collection promises that, in spite of our heartbreak, grief, and very human doubt, a deeper presence always accompanies us, too, offering a ‘peace that flows/beyond all understanding.’"
-James Crews, author of Turning Toward Grief and Breathing Room
“Here are poems that nestle close to the bone, companions on the way through whatever comes, a balm for hard moments and a praise song for the joyous ones. I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little made me feel seen and allowed an exploration of places I've not yet been. Full of beautifully simple language and vivid imagery, this is a collection to return to time and time again. Read these words and be nourished.”
-Heidi Barr, author of Collisions of Earth and Sky
"It's been said that D.H. Lawrence's one commandment was Thou shalt acknowledge the wonder. In these spare, reverent poems Krissy Kludt makes that wonder plain. This book returns what our frenzied modern living confiscates: a sense of the sacred, of the mystery."
-Teddy Macker, author of This World
“This collection is absolutely breathtaking. Weaving words and worlds of nature, family, presence and loss, Krissy invites us into the tender practice of paying attention, of honoring one’s longing to be among the rich wildness of the natural world, and of remaining connected to our loved ones through the passage of life and time.”
- Bethaney Wilkinson, author of A More Beautiful Way to Live
