Bill Knott

Bill Knott is the author of some of the America's finest, most original poetry. It is impossible to discuss post-modern American poetry without focusing on the singular vision of Bill Knott. A true maverick, a master revered by the finest poets of our time, Knott has been virtually ignored by both the American poetry establishment and the "avante garde." Among his many volumes of poetry are: The Quicken Tree, Outremer (Iowa Poetry Prize), Poems 1963-1988, Selected and Collected Poems, Rome in Rome, Love Poems to Myself, Nights of Naomi, Autonecrophilia, Aurealism, and The Naomi Poems. The selection below is from Knott's manuscript, Plaza de Loco.

Published on 10/1/1999

    1. Blitzbiz

    I was born to dive into a straw, swim through
    a straw, emerge from a straw—
    Sudden, glistening, the mediabreak
    made me drink ice tea in a sandstorm.

AFTER THE PERSIAN GULF WAR (March-June 1991)

    1. Blitzbiz

    I was born to dive into a straw, swim through
    a straw, emerge from a straw—
    Sudden, glistening, the mediabreak
    made me drink ice tea in a sandstorm.

    Now even the core of a sleepmask digs
    in me for the place I love least to go. Ink-length
    away, its sky the color of manacles will
    hold my toes locked to another's fingers:

    count up, with them, the death on them. Memorize
    these faces propped against the hearth of an
    earthquake daily, pure propitiates. Sweet

    cathedral built to pyromania's standards,
    Icarus parachutes into the midst
    of a cockfight and look! wins his feathers back.


    2. The Outremerican Religion

    Emerson said I must know it all firsthand.
    I can't simply take another's word for it—
    no: I must go there, experience it myself.
    But in order to go there I need a car,

    need gas, need oil. Like Jack Kerouac
    I must cross the country incessantly using
    whatever-it-takes: like Elizabeth
    Bishop I must never stop traveling to see

    the world close-up, anti-vicariously, re
    my Outremerican masters drawn one by one
    down that road, out past that sea, unkenning

    the cost, not reckoning the loss of fossil
    fuels my ego entails in fulfilling this
    me-feel-or-fail, I-go-to-be philosophy.

    (Don't stop—
                            indulge
                                          my need
                                                          for unmediated
    experiential
                         direct
                                     nonsurrogate
    —fuck periphrase!—to

    whom the immediacy of
    personal hands-on
    on-the-spot

    on-the-scene
    is vis a vis. Is Ism/ Real—
    Artless. Autobiographical. Allyouall.)


    3. Roadshow (Via Crucis)

    Now the Saved the Lost
    together must cross

    Outremerica . . .
    and down that downsome

    road, god we’re gonesome!
    Gas station stasis—?

    or 'Moral Crisis'?
    Hear our war, our prayer:

    Oh Christian Fathers—
    Reagan, Bush—give us

    a nation fit to
    drive children through.

    In herds,
    with guns at their heads.

    4. Garden of the Aediles

    It remains beneath the lids to be
    seen says memory. Vestige is mostly
    an orchestra led by a dowser,
    veiled, a water traced in testament,

    thirst for it heaps each drop with desert.
    False tooth fed into a rifle,
    that distance mows us down. Our
    lens weighs what, our faith? Outtakes

    droughttakes where pillars of smoke
    guide more children digging boundaries
    whose tourists long to obey

    any songbird's prey. High from its wells
    they soar, branches scorched in charcoal,
    limbs perched upon a pencilsill.

    Note:
    I can't resist appending just one quote from Our
    Redeemer Ralph Waldo: "Everything good is on the
    highway." (But don't forget to bring your Gulf creditcard!)

Copyright © Bill Knott, 1999. All Rights Reserved.