Bus Ride through a Drizzly Winter

Geof Huth, "tient" (23 January 2012)
A few days ago, while talking to James Belflower, he asked me what I was reading at that particular point in time, and I said, Nothing. I was, at that point, between books, so I said I was waiting to see what I would be reading, that what I choose has to feel right as I prepare to read it, that I never know what it will be until I look at my bookshelves (and I have many of them) and choose something to read.

Last night, I found myself about to take a short bus ride in the dark. It is winter here, but it's been drizzling because the world is too caution to fall completely into the thrall of winter this year. While preparing for this trip, I ran to my bookshelves and scanned them quickly wondering what I would read and how I would know what it was. The answer ended up being a paperback copy of Bill Knott's Selected and Collected Poems. The first reason for this is this was a paperback book that I wouldn't worry about damaging during the bus ride. But other reasons are that an old friend of mine from college, David Daniel, knows Knott and has enjoyed his poetry; that I've always meant to read Knott more carefully, and I have enjoyed a few of his short poems; and that I've been talking, for the past week, about how frequently poets are cranks, and Knott certainly counts. And maybe the idea of a book of both selected and collected poems (in two separate sections) intrigued me.

So I headed out into the night. Once on the bus, I pulled out a pencil and a copy of Knott's selected and collected, and I began to read. There was a 1960sishness to the poems, a few echoes of Ginsberg, echoes of the New York School, but also something entirely different, something a bit wild, in love, destitute, despairing, and even life-affirming. Knott was a romantic, but with his crankiness starting to show. And the picture of him on the back cover (showing a man disheveled, slumped, and looking up at the camera with a bit of gentle despair) sits atop a biography that both indicates Knott is unemployed and looking for work and that mentions he has two manuscripts in his possession and "is seeking a publisher for either or both."

During the bus ride, I was able to read through only the selected poems, not the collected, so I'm responding only to that slender section of poems pulled out of his nearly collected poems up to 1977. In this group, I find a number of poems of only a few lines that are actually fairly effective lyrics, and among his most famous poems. I've run across references to them. He has a fascination with death and cemeteries, though I've no idea why. (Poets' biographies are not my interest, so I'm lucky even to know Robert Creeley walked around with one empty eye socket.) His poems are never sweet but sometimes plaintive. And they have variety. Some are written in a stripped-down lyric voice and others are written in a strangely formed dialect that resembles (neither visually nor aurally) one would be likely to hear. Some poems are filled with strange neologisms and latent words, like "cobblebubbled," "foreverth," and "visionvulsions." And he has some powerful, often powerfully sad but poetically so, lines. I underlined those lines and those strange words (with my pencil) as I read. When I was done, I concluded that the book could have been called Love and Death, if that were not already a comedic film by Woody Allen.

Today, I decided to write a poem using the lines from Knott that I liked the most. I had no idea what this poem would be, but I knew it wouldn't be like the poems I had been writing this year, spare and gentle, if sometimes guided by a stark view of life. I knew I had to write something different from what I was writing, because Nico Vassilakis had complimented my poems twice in the last week, on Sunday saying, "O, very nice. Good magnetics  returning to the margin. Reads like a poem reviewing a poem which I always seem to like. And the sound is pleasure. Something is changing in your word poems that I've noticed. Enjoying." Whenever anyone tells you your poetry is good, it is time to change. That is why, as I've said in the past, we must kill Tony Trehy.

After choosing this poem, I decided to use the stolen lines (with changes, if necessary) in the order they had appeared in the selected. When I began to write the poem, I thought the poem would have long lines and be something of a ranting, a rending of clothing and wailing. But I wrote almost four lines that way, knew it wasn't working and created something else, the lines were shorter, but much longer than my lines have most recently been, and the voice of it has something of Knott in it, but not quite much, or not often much. If anything, this poem is most like Bill Knott's rant "To American Poets" (which I kept thinking was the poem Philip Booth recited to our poetry writing class once, but I really can't recall if that is so). This poem is a bit flip, which is something a little too easy for me (I have been accused of glibness more than once, possibly because I am glib), so I'm not sure I've abandoned my tendencies very much. I've simply chosen tendencies I usually exhibit outside the bloody arena of poetry.

So I'm posting this poem here because this makes my experience more one of writing than of publishing, and because this poem serves as the capstone to this my strange review of Bill Knott's poetry. (I don't go in for standard reviews.) To give you an idea which lines I've taken from Knott, I can tell you that most of the first line and the last line of the poem are from Knott, as are lines using these phrases: "your nakedness," "a petition for my death," "no shore to," "the world has no experience at being you," "filler for suicide notes," "both spectator and projector," "Therefore it must still be night," "if you are still alive when you read this," "the world is not divided into your schools of poetry," "the poems you broke away from," and "bread that weeps as you gently break it."

I hear a little echo of Knott in this poem, so it is a "Knotted Poem," but it is also otherwise knotted, as if into itself, into its twisted arguments, into my bones. And it may be the only poem where I have used the word "Geez."



Knotted Poem
I have never been in anyone'sdreams, or left anything behind there either, andI am breaking into morning using theshards left from smashing through the night andinto
your nakedness. Your white skin,paper, and upon it writtena petition for my death. Youcannot leave itbehind, you cannot remove it,and when you disrobe I can seeit. There is no shore
to your opening. Why have I never noticed before thismessage, which is a birthmark onyour inner thigh? How have I never seen youbefore? I remember the world hasno experience at being you, but I thought Ihad an idea what that being would be. How didI
never see that note on you? notfeel it whenever between your thighs? Truth is, Iam a poet. So whatI do is write filler for suicidenotes. Like"I love you." It is not aparticularly successful careerfor anyone who might want to beanything, somy goal has been to be nothing,which requires meto use every word up out of mybody. Poetry
is a great exhalation over anextended period of time. I mustremember not to take a breath inever. In this way, through thisact of poetry, I become both spectator and projector,both the movie andthe audience that believes itsits in the darkness,
yet it is covered with an oily yellowlight and peersintently, but slightly upward,into that movie sloshingover it. If you are stillalive when you read this,then I feel sorry for you, for Iwrote thisonly for your dreams. It seemsbest, to me
at least, that you perceivethese words as somethingonly half-real, and that you likelywill forget them, forget everything, forgetthe words between your thighs, the wordsof that plea for mercy. Oh, theworld is not divided into your schoolsof poetry. Each army clearly knowsits enemy,but they are fighting against everyone.Sure,
one side might say that thispoem isa lyric (I think I hear theplucking of a lyre as I type this), yet the otherwill say that I am exhibiting a distastefulmien
(well, if they know the word),that Iam, that my voice is, far tooironic to fita poem. As if this voice fitsanywhere! As if I am even here! What even makesthem think
I am here? Is it the fact thatthe word "I"keeps appearing? Geez, don'tthey knowthat is just my penis standingin for me? Synechdoche,they call it. I used to livethere until I movedto Metonymy. It's closer to workandreminds me of my hat. So don't
fret about the conflicts. Poetsdon'tknow what they're workingtowards. They are likebats swinging their pickaxesblindly in a goldmine while waiting for the canariesto expire. (We callthat metaphor, and it is particularto the province
of poetry. Reality, I believe, iscalled phor.) I am thinking about the poems youbroke away from, and howthey were too sharp for you,like shards of night, yet they were yourmost special
children, because they were theones youdidn't favor, the ones who hadonly themselvesto depend on. I know, I soundlike FrankO'Hara before the dune buggy,butright before. I am the gutturalscream, thehands held before the face as if
the flesh of palmscould hold off the metal and themotor. AndI know this poem is a piece ofcrap. They all are,but we can write only with our ownblood, and I
am coprosanguine. Everybody Icannot seeis sleeping around me, and Icannot heartheir breathing. Therefore itmust still be night. I chose this time to bestbe ableto worm my way into your dream,and I amsurprised by what I see here:Sunlight. Waterfilled with sunlight. Glasses ofwater filled
with sunlight. The bread that weepsas you gently break it into ears. Thesound of people hearing. (I cannotexplain it.) Notany smell, so no smell toopungent or
putrid. White linens, whitelinen pants, whitelinen tablecloth. Three stacksof white paper with a petition on each.Thenthe smell of pine, resinous, thescent of lemon,bright, and the mouth puckers,the tonguealmost speaks but can't. Singingthat I cannot
see. But nothing happens. Where,I wonder are the chases? thenearly failedescapes? the spurning ofadvances?  thesuccession of failures? I find nothingmessy. So nothing poetic. Atleast
not in the manner of this poem.And everything beautiful. Again, notlikethese words. In your dream, youturn towardme and face me, and I see youseeing me,even though I am not dreaming. Iam
merely entering a dream. Somaybe youdon't see me and see rightthrough meto a red wall with some deepgreen mossgrowing between the bricks. I amlying
on the wall, so it is really apath toa doorway, and you are up highin the maples,maybe holding on with yourhands, yourright leg wrapped tight around abough, or you are floating in the barebranches
beginning to bud. I cannot seeyou well enough to tell. Still,I amastonished at you the way theworld is not.

ecr. l'inf.