Bill Knott’s friend and fellow poet, Thomas Lux, edited I Am Flying Into Myself and provides a moving Introduction to this quirky poet. Bill Knott lost his parents at an early age. He suffered abuse in orphanages. After a brief stint in the Army, Knott drifted from job to job. Knot took a poetry class from John Logan and started to write poems in the 1960s. His first book of poems, The Naomi Poems, was published under the pseudonym of “St. Geraud” who was “a virgin and a suicide.”
As you can surmise, Bill Knott was a weird dude. His poems are quirky and moody. Here’s a sample:
“Death”
Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest.
They will place my hands like this,
It will look as though I am flying into myself.
Bill Knott died in Bay City, Michigan after failed heart surgery in 2014. Who is your favorite poet?
I have a number. Is Knott yours?
William Stafford comes to mind whenever I’m asked. Basho. Ogden Nash, Gwendolyn Brooks. Poe, Stephen Vincent Benet, Langston Hughes, John Ciardi, Plath, Joy Harjo. Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dorothy Parker, Gary Snyder. Certainly some others.
don marquis and e. e. cummings. Joanna Russ and Thomas Disch.
William Carlos Williams, Marilyn Hacker.
Todd, I briefly went through a William Carlos Williams binge in the 1970s where I read everything he had in print at the time.
Todd, I get funny looks when I admit I like Robert Frost’s poems.
As long as they don’t sing “The Dangling Conversation” at you, you’re ahead of the game.
Todd, I started reading Bill Knott back in the Sixties…and continued into the 2000s. A unique voice…
Wallace Stevens. He imprinted on me at an early age—and I’ve never found a reason to change my opinion. As a young teen, it was my wont to wander down the library shelves pulling books at random (I can’t tell you how many authors & books I discovered through this method). One day I came across a book with the intriguing title, THE PALM AT THE END OF THE MIND. It was the collected poems of Wallace Stevens—and just glancing at the titles in the table of contents (“The Idea of Order at Key West”, “Peter Quince at the Clavier”, “Postcard from the Edge of A Volcano”) let me know I’d found something special. I have continued through the 50-plus years since I first grabbed that book to use Stevens’s “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm” as my ideal of capturing the perfect zen moment.
Deb, as you know, the Poetry World was cool towards Wallace Stevens…because he was executive for an insurance company. Stevens had his own style that was unique. You have great taste in poets and novelists! Yesterday, Henry James, today, Wallace Stevens! Impressive!
Stevens, and Wilfred Owen…Frost and Ai…
And this Abbott is solid, Jackson.
I’d have to say my favorite poet is anon,, whose output was so vast that it is hard to believe one person could have written all of them. Besides, anon. penned the classic poem about the personage from Nantucket.
Jerry, I’m glad you’re not Anonymous!!
Anon is highly uneven, at best. Writes everything too quickly. Then, Anonymous comes for them…