Sandra Simonds at Poetry Magazine:
While Knott may have alienated his peers in what Charles Bernstein dubbed “official verse culture,” by the 1970s and ’80s his irreverent style, trickster persona, and anti-establishment ethos were precisely why he found fans in the emerging punk rock scene. In their novel Inferno (2016), Eileen Myles calls Knott a “genius” who lived in a “hovel” and looked “generally greasy.” They also remark, “people claim that Bill Knott was the inspiration for punk.” Perhaps Knott’s connection to punk rock explains why the foreword of the reissued Naomi Poems is written by Richard Hell, a pioneer in the punk movement known for his bands Television and Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Upon encountering the collection at age 18 or 19, within a year of its release, Hell says the book felt “like an infection or injection.” He was captivated by its “all-pervading condition of longing, adoration, fear, and fury, lurching from near-worship of ‘Naomi’ into anger and despair at, among much else, the bloodthirsty American military and their corporate cohort.”
Star Black, Knott’s former partner, mentioned to me in a phone conversation that Thurston Moore of the band Sonic Youth exchanged poems and music with Knott. When I reached out to Moore via email, he recalled that he asked Knott to open for Sonic Youth in the early 2000s but the poet “demurred.”
more here.
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