BILL KNOTT


A poet and publisher I much respect and admire the work of recently wrote that he made it a practice not to publish poetry because poetry doesn't sell. A nail in the coffin statement. If poets think this way, what hope is there for published poetry? Not much. Poets are supposed to be adventurous, ridiculous, dreamers, rabble-rousers, insane, scouts, fools, and in short magnificent. When you start thinking about money and success in publishing poetry you may as well be a tightrope walker who thinks about falling. It has nothing to do with falling. It has to do with floating. In publishing it has nothing to do with money and success, it has everything to do with taking a chance; a craftsman chance. Publishing that book the world needs, not the one they're expecting. When cutting a tree the woodsman who plants trees knows the trees. The tree knows him, too. Often the continuity is filled with grace. But not always, so plan to get dirty.

Laugh at me? I'll laugh at you, but I'm laughing.

Here below in the mail today is a box load of new books the poet Bill Knott has sent to me. I didn't ask. He probably believes he doesn't have to ask, he's adventurous. I've been reading Bill Knott's books since the late 60s and everyone knows the story of his somewhat hot commodity then, dear Saint Geraud, the tiny poems that knocked the block off most, small press and large press publishers, many books and I've read them all in the legit press and many in his latest appearance as self-publisher dynamo. He may have a rotten behavior or he may have inspired behavior, or maybe he's just a whiner, I don't care — at least he's a doer, and he gets his work up and out and about and pays for it somehow and thinks to share it with me and I share it now with you. The books are shiny black and white. If you threw them out into the snow, the words on the cover would shout out! and I even believe endure.

You're looking at a gift horse in the mouth.

WORSE


All my life I had nothing,
but worse than that,
I wouldn't share it


Bill Knott

FOOTNOTE


All of us who lived on earth
and all our loves and wars
may not appear at all
in the moon's memoirs.


Bill Knott





HUMIDITY'S TONES


Four AM, nothing moving, no hurry,
dawn still has time to be choosy
selecting its pinks. But now a breeze
brushes across me — the way my skin
is cooled off by the evaporation
of sweat, this artistry, this system
sombers me: when I am blown from
the body of life will it be refreshed?
I dread the color of the answer Yes.


Bill Knott