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Adios, Bill Knott
Bill Knott I just read in Coldfront that Bill Knott passed away on Wednesday due to complications from surgery. What a loss for his friends and for American “verse culture.” Bill liked to give the impression that he was leading a posthumous existence—ignored, washed up, inconsequential—when in fact he was well known (though no Mary Oliver or Robert Hass), creatively engaged (poetry, appreciations, screeds, visual art), and influential in ways that might inspire envy in other poets of his generation (he was born in 1940).Read More
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The Best 10 Poetry Books of 2012
I’m talking, of course, about the books that came across my desk—a limiting factor because I almost never receive a “review copy.” (They’re always welcome, though!) I buy all but a handful of the books I read, so my reading is skewed by my own interests right up front. This unprofessional status frees me from the angst suffered by professional critics, according to Stephen Burt and Marjorie Perloff, as they fight to stay atop the wave of new poetry books that maliciously seeks to drown them.Read More
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Granularity
Granularity Bill Knott has finally rolled all his “on poetry” posts into one blog. They are wonderful, each and every one. I think of Knott’s crisp, insightful readings against the gaseous posturing of Silliman, the phoniness of Bernstein, the trend-of-the-moment faux-profound enthusiasm of Perloff et. al.Read More
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Knott Appreciates and Praises
I hate to admit it but in Bill Knott’s latest reorganization of his blogs I missed one of the best—his blog devoted to “Appreciations and Praise” for poets old and new. Knott is no critic in the professional sense; his readings—passionate, notational, principled, funny, honest—would be unlikely to grace the all-but-airless journals both in print and online that talk about poetry as if it were nothing more than an exercise in coy allusion and craven distillations of influence.Read More
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Issue 1 of Salamander Cove’s New Series
Annie Wyndham at Salamander Cove has launched a remarkable “Featured Poet Series” with a capacious selection of poems and artwork by Bill Knott. I’m not sure how the poems were chosen, but they echo each other in interesting ways, and Knott’s art—which for me seems to spring from a sensibility similar to that of the great Max Ernst (though without his interest in the figurative)—accompanies but doesn’t comment on the poems. Knott is a juggler of words and colors, of sprung rhythms and wound-tight forms. Annie deserves our thanks for putting his work forward in such a beautiful way.Read More
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Contra Manifestos
I use Google Reader to stream posts from the too-many blogs I follow, which is good because some bloggers post something maybe a little too piquant or politically incorrect and then delete their entries—but Google Reader displays them anyway. The post is gone when you click through, but the original is there in Reader. Bill Knott, who I admire a lot, does the post/delete routine fairly frequently.Read More
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Broken Flutes
As you know, if you noticed, I missed another Friday Notebook. My notebook has become a not-book. The pages hate me. This is because I’m spending all my energies on old poems, proofing pages for Thread of the Real, flirting with the gone rhythms, the tropes obvious or arcane, the little turns in the path no one knows about but me. No notebook entries, no. And besides, there have been no compelling poems from others at the moment (though some are in the offing—that is, in the stack by my bed—I feel sure).Read More
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New Salamander Poems
Annie Wyndham has posted a fresh batch of poems over at Salamander Cove, selected from her reading both on and off line. Fine work by Bob Arnold, Bill Knott, Joel E. Jacobson, John Levy and more.Read More
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Friday Notebook 01.27.12
Pastiche: After Bill Knott’sSelected Poems, 1960-2012* I like how Bill Knott blows his mouth harpblithely, as Stevens played his oboe. I callthem masters as I hum-blow my kazoo,spin these verses out of mere asidessigned sotto mano by deaf-mute twinsparted at birth, but years later deliveredinto each other’s care. Small wondermy poems veer from rancor to abjecttenderness, marking over the yearsa hidden rhythm like the heart of somegravedigger scooping vacancies outin the gathering dusk. Yet I (no Knott,no Stevens) play whatever my little giftallows, swaying in these masters’ shadows.Read More
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Václav Havel on Recent American Poetry: A Travesty
I was reading along in Václav Havel‘s historic essay “The Power of the Powerless” when I came to a passage that made my poetic antenna hum. I realized that Havel’s analysis of what he called “post-totalitarian” Czechoslovakia, published in October 1978, includes a pretty fair description of American poetry at this moment. I don’t by any stretch of the imagination mean to trivialize Havel’s essay, which galvanized the dissident community and ultimately helped to bring down the Czech regime. That said, I can’t resist.Read More