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![[words on THE NAOMI POEMS: CORPSE AND BEANS by SAINT GERAUD AKA BILL KNOTT]
*
I discovered Bill Knott in 2009
I was attracted to his poems’ playfulness / keen insights
he often integrates ‘dark’ humor
he works in a multitude of modes & he considers (or considered in this 2005 interview: http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_02_004302.php)this the reason he didn’t necessarily find the success that many of the people of his ‘generation’ found
but I love that he works in a multitude of modes
& despite his versatility, he still has a distinct ‘voice’
The Naomi Poems was his first book, published in 1968, 2 years before he faked his suicide
people thought he was dead in 1966
‘The letter, allegedly written by a friend of the poet, stated that Bill Knott had committed suicide at 26 in his room in a tenement on North Clark Street in Chicago and that his body was on its way back to his native Michigan for burial’
but Bill Knott is still alive today
perhaps his pseudonym ‘Saint Geraud’ was born out of Knott’s ‘death’
In the ‘Foreword’ of the book, Paul Carroll claims, ‘What fascinates me about Sain Geraud’s direct, impassioned voice is how it sounds both personal and yet anonymous or “faceless”.’
‘he doesn’t ask us to understand or analyze: he asks only that we hear of his passion and desires in all their incandescence and purity. And this may help to clarify the use of the psuedonym instead of his everyday name of Bill Knott.’
*
I ‘tweeted’ a small Bill Knott poem from this book recently
Bill himself actually found the tweet & replied angrily w/’please don’t forget the poem’s title: ‘Goodbye’—it’s just as important as the lines (and the period at the end of the poem)
I reposted the poem as he instructed & told him I was rereading this book
he said, ‘best way to insult a 72-year-old poet: tell them you’re reading their 1st book instead of their later ones—’
ouch
but I do have a handful of Bill Knott’s books, outside of The Naomi Poems
I just have a special affinity for that first book
I took a workshop w/ Tom Lux at Georgia Tech in 2009
he had a cardboard box full of self-published Bill Knott books, made simply from paper
I love them
San Francisco State University’s Creative Writing office also has a cardboard box full of Knott’s self-published books
these have actual covers
I took 3 of them
Bill Knott also has a blog that you should check out: http://knottprosepo.blogspot.com
which seems to be ‘down’ right now, as is periodically so
despite all his difficulties, Bill Knott is someone I’m extremely fascinated with
& at his peaks he impresses me just as much or more than any poet I’ve ever read
I want to interview him & hope to do so soon
*
many of the poems in this book are hyper brief
this is one of my favorite poetry forms
he definitely has a touch of ‘surrealism’ in this book
which makes sense, since apparently Paul Eluard was one of his favorite poets during this time of his life
odd juxtapositions
drafts of ‘illogic’
‘dreamscape’ love poems
metaphysical / psychedelic language:
‘A kiss restores wombsight to our limbs / It has been found / What / It has not been found / The waves nail upon the sand your escape / To where starfish are pointing’
as w/ ‘wombsight’, he creates his own words – neologisms
‘psychedelicately’
this word appears in the poem ‘KAREZZAS, CUNTRAS, COCKTURNES, MANSHRIEKS, CARRIONCRIES’
which is ‘—for the Human Be-ins and young rock poets juggler heads’
was Bill Knott a ‘hippie’?
many of the poems, as the title of the book suggests, are dedicated to ‘Naomi’
this ‘Naomi’ presence seems ‘supernatural’, like the speaker’s ‘muse’
& the ‘love poems’ in this book are some the most surprising & original that I’ve read:
*
‘I kiss every body of you, every face’
‘I breathe your / heartbeat, Naomi’
‘For the first time, I became empty enough to cry for her’
‘I shall be the shepherd of your hair’
*
he also references other poets in this book, as in the poems ‘TO AMERICAN POETS’ in which he writes:
‘Pound’s or William’s theories on prosody don’t meet the / cries of dying children’
&
‘Soon there will be no ideas but in things, / in rubble, in skulls held under the oceans’ magnifying-glass, / in screams driven into one lightning-void. / Only you can resurrect the present’
or in one of his ‘PROSEPOEM”s, in which he writes:
‘India and China, please help, there is a famine here, an America-famine, there’s no longer enough America to feed Whitman or Poe, and I’m getting very thin. Oh dropping bombs upon what no longer exists!’
which brings me to my next point:
some of the poems in this book are deeply political
politically ‘preoccupied’
for example:
‘Suffering is the same both places. But / at least in Vietnam death is death … Here, in this / stainless steel cement tower white concrete glass city, / death is the sole vegetation: death is life, a green magnet’
*
Bill Knott handles his subject matter very delicately yet also enigmatically
as Paul Carroll stated in the foreword, Knott’s poems here present themselves to us without forcing singular meanings
they open themselves up to us w/ suggestions & possibilities
these poems are ‘intense’
‘dark’
‘sardonic’
‘neurotic’
‘fearless’
they beg rereadings
‘cosmic’
‘aphorisms’
here are my other favorite moments from the book:
‘I only keep this voice to give to anything afraid of me’
‘Nakedness exists only an instant / Quickly becomes flesh, becomes thought / Nakedness flares to light up love / To resurrect the present with a touch’
‘picking myself from between my teeth’
the poem ‘POEM’: ‘The only response / to a child’s grave is / to lie down before it and play dead’
‘the cows / Who licked my heart like a block of salt’
‘light and shadow / play chess; man is present, judging’
‘knock at your shadow / to ask the way home from death’
‘And upsidedown in the earth a dead man walks upon my / soles when I walk.’
& the last 2 lines of the book: ‘I have sleep to do. / I have work to dream.’
*
here’s a link to this book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Naomi-Poems-Corpse-Beans/dp/B000IZB5FQ/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1349384760&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=bill+knott+naomi+poems
here’s a link to Bill Knott’s ‘newer’ books:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_show_unfiltered?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Cn%3A283155%2Ck%3Abill+knott%2Cn%3A!1000%2Cn%3A17%2Cn%3A10248&bbn=17&sort=daterank&keywords=bill+knott&unfiltered=1&ie=UTF8&qid=1348935032](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbe0i1Er671r1vr5po1_400.jpg)
[words on THE NAOMI POEMS: CORPSE AND BEANS by SAINT GERAUD AKA BILL KNOTT]
*
I discovered Bill Knott in 2009
I was attracted to his poems’ playfulness / keen insights
he often integrates ‘dark’ humor
he works in a multitude of modes & he considers (or considered in this 2005 interview: http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_02_004302.php)this the reason he didn’t necessarily find the success that many of the people of his ‘generation’ found
but I love that he works in a multitude of modes
& despite his versatility, he still has a distinct ‘voice’
The Naomi Poems was his first book, published in 1968, 2 years before he faked his suicide
people thought he was dead in 1966
‘The letter, allegedly written by a friend of the poet, stated that Bill Knott had committed suicide at 26 in his room in a tenement on North Clark Street in Chicago and that his body was on its way back to his native Michigan for burial’
but Bill Knott is still alive today
perhaps his pseudonym ‘Saint Geraud’ was born out of Knott’s ‘death’
In the ‘Foreword’ of the book, Paul Carroll claims, ‘What fascinates me about Sain Geraud’s direct, impassioned voice is how it sounds both personal and yet anonymous or “faceless”.’
‘he doesn’t ask us to understand or analyze: he asks only that we hear of his passion and desires in all their incandescence and purity. And this may help to clarify the use of the psuedonym instead of his everyday name of Bill Knott.’
*
I ‘tweeted’ a small Bill Knott poem from this book recently
Bill himself actually found the tweet & replied angrily w/’please don’t forget the poem’s title: ‘Goodbye’—it’s just as important as the lines (and the period at the end of the poem)
I reposted the poem as he instructed & told him I was rereading this book
he said, ‘best way to insult a 72-year-old poet: tell them you’re reading their 1st book instead of their later ones—’
ouch
but I do have a handful of Bill Knott’s books, outside of The Naomi Poems
I just have a special affinity for that first book
I took a workshop w/ Tom Lux at Georgia Tech in 2009
he had a cardboard box full of self-published Bill Knott books, made simply from paper
I love them
San Francisco State University’s Creative Writing office also has a cardboard box full of Knott’s self-published books
these have actual covers
I took 3 of them
Bill Knott also has a blog that you should check out: http://knottprosepo.blogspot.com
which seems to be ‘down’ right now, as is periodically so
despite all his difficulties, Bill Knott is someone I’m extremely fascinated with
& at his peaks he impresses me just as much or more than any poet I’ve ever read
I want to interview him & hope to do so soon
*
many of the poems in this book are hyper brief
this is one of my favorite poetry forms
he definitely has a touch of ‘surrealism’ in this book
which makes sense, since apparently Paul Eluard was one of his favorite poets during this time of his life
odd juxtapositions
drafts of ‘illogic’
‘dreamscape’ love poems
metaphysical / psychedelic language:
‘A kiss restores wombsight to our limbs / It has been found / What / It has not been found / The waves nail upon the sand your escape / To where starfish are pointing’
as w/ ‘wombsight’, he creates his own words – neologisms
‘psychedelicately’
this word appears in the poem ‘KAREZZAS, CUNTRAS, COCKTURNES, MANSHRIEKS, CARRIONCRIES’
which is ‘—for the Human Be-ins and young rock poets juggler heads’
was Bill Knott a ‘hippie’?
many of the poems, as the title of the book suggests, are dedicated to ‘Naomi’
this ‘Naomi’ presence seems ‘supernatural’, like the speaker’s ‘muse’
& the ‘love poems’ in this book are some the most surprising & original that I’ve read:
*
‘I kiss every body of you, every face’
‘I breathe your / heartbeat, Naomi’
‘For the first time, I became empty enough to cry for her’
‘I shall be the shepherd of your hair’
*
he also references other poets in this book, as in the poems ‘TO AMERICAN POETS’ in which he writes:
‘Pound’s or William’s theories on prosody don’t meet the / cries of dying children’
&
‘Soon there will be no ideas but in things, / in rubble, in skulls held under the oceans’ magnifying-glass, / in screams driven into one lightning-void. / Only you can resurrect the present’
or in one of his ‘PROSEPOEM”s, in which he writes:
‘India and China, please help, there is a famine here, an America-famine, there’s no longer enough America to feed Whitman or Poe, and I’m getting very thin. Oh dropping bombs upon what no longer exists!’
which brings me to my next point:
some of the poems in this book are deeply political
politically ‘preoccupied’
for example:
‘Suffering is the same both places. But / at least in Vietnam death is death … Here, in this / stainless steel cement tower white concrete glass city, / death is the sole vegetation: death is life, a green magnet’
*
Bill Knott handles his subject matter very delicately yet also enigmatically
as Paul Carroll stated in the foreword, Knott’s poems here present themselves to us without forcing singular meanings
they open themselves up to us w/ suggestions & possibilities
these poems are ‘intense’
‘dark’
‘sardonic’
‘neurotic’
‘fearless’
they beg rereadings
‘cosmic’
‘aphorisms’
here are my other favorite moments from the book:
‘I only keep this voice to give to anything afraid of me’
‘Nakedness exists only an instant / Quickly becomes flesh, becomes thought / Nakedness flares to light up love / To resurrect the present with a touch’
‘picking myself from between my teeth’
the poem ‘POEM’: ‘The only response / to a child’s grave is / to lie down before it and play dead’
‘the cows / Who licked my heart like a block of salt’
‘light and shadow / play chess; man is present, judging’
‘knock at your shadow / to ask the way home from death’
‘And upsidedown in the earth a dead man walks upon my / soles when I walk.’
& the last 2 lines of the book: ‘I have sleep to do. / I have work to dream.’
*
here’s a link to this book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Naomi-Poems-Corpse-Beans/dp/B000IZB5FQ/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1349384760&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=bill+knott+naomi+poems
here’s a link to Bill Knott’s ‘newer’ books:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_show_unfiltered?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Cn%3A283155%2Ck%3Abill+knott%2Cn%3A!1000%2Cn%3A17%2Cn%3A10248&bbn=17&sort=daterank&keywords=bill+knott&unfiltered=1&ie=UTF8&qid=1348935032
