Bye Bill Knot – A Language Composed of Kisses & Leaves

  • Bill Knott –1940 – 2014

    that Bill passed away yesterday from complications with surgery. The inventive, subversive, and immensely influential poet was 74.

    Knott, who was an orphan, spent a year in an institution for the mentally ill in Elgin, Illinois, when he was 15; he worked with his uncle at a farm in Michigan, spent two years in the army, and wrote his first book while working as a hospital orderly. He taught for many years at Emerson College in Boston.

    Death by Bill Knott

    Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest.
    They will place my hands like this.
    It will look as though I am flying into myself.

  • Knotty Knotty Boy (Richard Hell on Bill Knott)

    NUREMBURG U.S.A.

    In this time and place, where “Bread and Circuses” has
    become “Bread and Atrocities,” to say “I love you” is
    like saying the latest propaganda phrase… ‘defoliation’… ‘low yield blast’.
    If bombing children is preserving peace, then
    my fucking you is a war-crime.

  • Michael Andre

    I thought at first that someone was repeating the old joke about Saint Geraud.
    Knott faked his suicide years ago, and then had his work ascribed to “Saint Geraud.”

  • Bill Knot Art blog

    Interview I

  • Click to see large and read a poem The Lost

  • Interview Harriett (He was reading Patricia Highsmith)

    What language will be safe
    When we lie awake all night
    Saying palm words, no fingertip words
    This wound searching us for a voice
    Will become a fountain with rooms to let
    Or a language composed of kisses and leaves