Farrar, Straus & Giroux (paperback, 2018)
"This brand-new, posthumously published selection from Bill Knott’s oeuvre—edited by a longtime friend, the late Thomas Lux—revivifies a half-century of dedication to the craft. Knott was a wild-eyed surrealist, a mussed-up romantic, a part-time minimalist, a learned formalist, a straight-faced comedian, a self-effacing provocateur, and a true-blue amateur. His poetry exalts and dashes down. It shreds hearts, cusses, neologizes. Befuddles and soothes. Throws tantrums. Points fingers. Pours tea. Paints the moon. They are pulsating poems, Bill Knott’s, and filled with all the breath of the breathless."
-- Alexander Moysaenko
* * *
"Sonnet (To —)"
The way the world is not
Astonished at you
It doesn't blink a leaf
When we step from the house
Leads me to think
That beauty is natural, unremarkable
And not to be spoken of
Except in the course of singing and worksharing
The course of squeezes and neighbors
The course of you tying back your raving hair to go out
And the course of course of me
Astonished at you
The way the world is not
