Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.
Bill Knott: Our Farewells Lack the Plausibility of our Departures (Three paintings)
_____
Bill Knott ((1940 – 2014) was an American poet and artist known for his wild originality. His work often displayed a wry, self-deprecating sense of humor, and he was critical of what he saw as an epidemic of humorlessness in contemporary American poetry. Poets who cite him as an influence include Thomas Lux, Mary Karr, Stephen Dobyns, Denise Duhamel, Denis Johnson, and Janaka Stucky. One of Johnson’s novels, Already Dead: A California Gothic, was inspired by Knott’s “Poem Noir.” A selection of his work, I Am Flying Into Myself: Selected Poems, 1960-2014, was compiled by Thomas Lux and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in February 2017. An extensive archive of Knott’s art and poetry collected by Maya Jade can be found here.
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Wonderful art! And I’m always happy when I have students who love his quirky poems (because I do 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Glad to see him finding new readers all the time. For those seeking the prime Knott experience, I recommend his iconic debut—now back in print for the first time in almost 60 years: https://www.blackocean.org/catalog1/corpse-and-beans
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you! I’ve been a Bill Knott fan since Professor Michael Ryan introduced me to his work when I was 20 years old.
>
LikeLike
Thanks, Michael. Love Knott’s stuff. (Dedicated the first wee poem of my new book to him. When he gets it right, he really gets it right x)
LikeLiked by 1 person
He really does nail it. My favorite comic poem of all time is Knott’s Sudden Departures. Check out the link above.
>
LikeLiked by 2 people
To my shame, I didn’t know of him. Just looked at the archive, and WOW! Now I must find his poems. Thank you for posting, Michael.
LikeLiked by 5 people
I love Bill Knott’s poetry, but his visual art is a new discovery for me. I’ve had this post ready for months, but I could never fit it into the flow of poems and essays, so I decided today to send it out as a bonus for VP subscribers. Aren’t the images wild?
LikeLiked by 4 people
Totally breahtaking!
LikeLiked by 5 people