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 04/5/2000

            Meadow of matchsticks,
            soon to be rekindled
            by Spring the incendiary.

            The exact flame of your blossoms
            will ignite the passions
            happily sapped by time--

            Meadow of matchsticks,
            soon to be rekindled
            by Spring the incendiary.

            The exact flame of your blossoms
            will ignite the passions
            happily sapped by time--

            Dripdrop their excess went
            and now miners' hats
            light up like love before

            your vein, the frame of which
            is there to depict the drift,
            the waste when I painted

            all the review copies
            they sent me. But those books
            open to polar pages where you

            and I weigh the ends of this
            teeter totem down, you
            at the head and nadir me;

            where postmortem is
            the aura of self-portrait,
            its other half regained at last.

Copyright © Bill Knott, 2000. All Rights Reserved.