Dave Bonta's Blog - Posts Tagged "self-published"

The famously nonconformist poet Bill Knott turned down an offer from FSG to publish his New and Selected a few years ago, opting instead to self-publish. You can get his Collected Poems through Lulu—which I've not yet done—or you can take advantage of an offer at his art blog to buy an original painting for between $100 and $150 and get, in addition to the painting, a limited-edition print and "at least 10" of his hand-printed collections of poetry. I got 15. They are of very basic design, and most don't have a whole lot of white space—they are crammed with poems, even the short ones. They average about 50 pages in length; the longest is 204 pages long (Collected Sonnets, Vol. 2—with two sonnets per page!). Knott's poetry is all over the place in terms of style, mood and subject matter, ranging from formal verse to word salad and from satire to School of Quietude to surrealism. So there's something in it for everyone.

Today's poem at Via Negativa is an homage to Bill Knott.