MaverickMagazine - http://www.maverickmagazine.com
PLAZA DE LOCO
http://www.maverickmagazine.com/articles/207/1/PLAZA-DE-LOCO/Page1.html
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.
 
By Bill Knott
Published on 02/4/2003
 
        It's high tide in the hero
        The floodgates fail the heart cowers
        Blood of his deeds drowns the town square
        Above it all this statue towers

        It's high tide in the hero
        The floodgates fail the heart cowers
        Blood of his deeds drowns the town square
        Above it all this statue towers

        And as the captain of a sinking ship
        The instant the waves reach his toes
        Snaps to attention it waits
        Commanding some former pose

        The inscription on which is blurred
        Hey what is the word
        What doe his crumbling mad pedestal say

        To find my way to you is
        Not to find your way to you
        Therefore is not to find my way

Copyright © Bill Knott, 2002 All Rights Reserved.