ALL MY POETRY, EVERY POEM I'VE WRITTEN SINCE 1960, IS POSTED HERE FOR OPEN ACCESS, PERUSAL AND PROPAGATION: YOU HAVE MY THANKS TO PLEASE COPY/DISTRIBUTE WHATEVER YOU LIKE.

MOST ARE GROUPED INTO VARIOUS COLLECTIONS (SEE SIDEBAR LIST): EACH CAN BE READ IN ITS ENTIRETY ON THE PUTERSCREEN AND OR DOWNLOADED VIA PDF TO PRINTOUT FOR FREE: DIY FOR A HARDCOPY ("DEAD TREE EDITION") OF ANY VOLUME.

ODD POEMS AND DRAFTS (AND OCCASIONAL MARGINALIA)
ARE IN ARCHIVES.  PLUS SCANS OF SOME OF MY ARTWORK.

BUT!— before you read my poems, you should ponder these Knott Notices (all quotes authentic):

"[Knott's] poems are so naive that the question of their poetic quality hardly arises. . . .  Mr. Knott practices a dead language."
—Denis Donoghue, New York Review of Books, May 7, 1970

"Bill Knott . . . is so bad one can only groan in response."
—Peter Stitt, Georgia Review, Winter 1983

[Bill Knott's poems are] typically mindless. . . . He produces only the prototaxis of idiocy. . . . Rumor has it that Knott’s habit of giving his birth and terminal dates together originated when he realized he could no longer face the horror of a poetry reading he was scheduled to give."
—Charles Molesworth, Poetry (Chicago) Magazine, May 1972

"Bill Knott's poems are . . . rhetorical fluff . . . and fake."
—Ron Loewinsohn, TriQuarterly, Spring 1970

"Bill Knott['s] ancient, academic ramblings are part of what's wrong with poetry today.  Ignore the old bastard. . . ."
—Collin Kelley (from "They Shoot Poets Don't They" blog, August 08, 2006)

"[Bill] Knott's work tends today to inspire strong dismissal. . . . [He's] been forced to self-publish some of his recent books. . . . [B]ad—not to mention offensively grotesque—poetry. . . . appalling . . . . maddening . . . . wildly uneven . . . adolescent, or obsessively repetitive . . . grotesqueries . . . . [His] language is like thick, old paint . . . his poems have a kind of prickly accrual that's less decorative than guarded or layered . . . emotionally distancing . . . . uncomfortable.  Knott . . . is a willful . . . irritating . . . contrarian."
—Meghan O'Rourke, Poetry (Chicago) Magazine, Feb 2005 

"I’m not that familiar with Kenneth Koch’s poetry. I often see him as the spiritual father of Bill Knott. . . ."
—Geof Huth (from "dbqp: visualizing poetics" blog)

"[Bill Knott's books are] filled with venom. . . . Knott seems to hate himself . . . and he seems to hate his readers." 
—Kirk Robinson, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine)

"[Bill Knott is] incompetent . . ."
—Alicia Ostriker, Partisan Review

"Bill Knott [is] the crown prince of bad judgment. . . ."
—Ron Silliman, Silliman's Blog, June 26, 2007

"Eccentric, uneven . . . poet Bill Knott is not [fit] to win prizes . . . [His work is] thorny . . . rebellious, avant-garde . . . ."
—Robert Pinsky, Washington Post.com, April 17, 2005

"[Bill Knott's poetry is] queerly adolescent . . . extremely weird. . . personal to the point of obscurity. . . his idiosyncrasy has grown formulaic, his obscure poems more obscure, his terse observations so terse they scoot by without leaving much of a dent in the reader. . . . There is a petulance at work [in his poetry]. . . . [H]is style has grown long in the tooth. . . . In fact, [at least one of his poems is] unethical. . . ."
—Marc Pietrzykowski, Contemporary Poetry Review

“Bill Knot [sic] sucks."
—Marcus Slease (from "Never Mind the Beasts" blog, June 10, 2005)

"[Bill Knott is] a malignant clown . . ."
—Calvin Bedient, Massachusetts Review

"Bill Knott is the Bad Boy of American Poetry."
—Carolyn Kizer, Washington Post Book World

"Bill Knott should be beaten with a flail."
—Tomaz Salamun, Snow

[FLIP THAT COIN AGAIN AND YOU MIGHT GET THIS:]

"For the past thirty-five years Bill Knott has shown himself to be one of our very best poets and perhaps the most original. . . . I think he is one of the few poets of my generation who will remain with us."
—Stephen Dobyns, Harvard Review (Spring 2002)

"Bill Knott is a meld between Gerard Manley Hopkins and MTV, producing poems with the former's violent beauty and the latter's largely ironic postmodern presence."
—Mary Jo Bang, Lingua Franca (May 2000)

"Knott was an incredibly important poet to me and still is; I think Bill Knott is a genius and probably the least known great poet in America. It's really kind of pathetic that he's not as well known as he was even thirty years ago because he's even better now."
—Thomas Lux, The Cortland Review (August 1999)

“Bill Knott is one of the best poets writing in America.  Without question, he is the most original.”
—Kurt Brown, Harvard Review (Spring 1999)

"Bill Knott is a genius."
—Tom Andrews, Ohio Review (1997)

“It is no accident that the major British and American poets of the 19th and 20th century were outsiders.  .  .  . The most original poet of my generation, Bill Knott, is also the greatest outsider.”
—Stephen Dobyns, AWP Chronicle (1995)

“Bill Knott is the secret hero of a lot of poets. . . . [P]oets who differ radically from Knott look to his work for the shock of recognizing themselves.”
—David Kirby, American Book Review (1991)

“Bill Knott’s poems . . . are the poems Beckett’s Gogo would write if he were among us.”
—Sharon Dunn, Massachusetts Review (1990)

“[Knott’s ‘Poems 1963-1988’ is] a powerful and original book, a record of one of the most disturbing imaginations of our times.  Few people can create a world so completely and concisely as Knott does time and time again.”
—Kevin Hart, Overland (1990)

“Knott is no parlor poet.  His work is the most sharply original of any poet in his generation.”
—Jim Elledge, Booklist (1989)

“Among people who know his work, Bill Knott is regarded as one of the most original voices in American poetry.”
—Charles Simic, blurb for Poems 1963-1988 (1989)

“Knott sets up principles far outside most of those we know, and he always writes up to and beyond those standards.”      
—Sandra McPherson, blurb for Outremer (1989)

“Bill Knott is an American original.  No one else could have imagined what James Wright once referred to as Bill Knott’s ‘indispensable poems.’”
—Stuart Dischell, Harvard Book Review (1989)

“I think Bill Knott is the best poet in America right now.”
—Thomas Lux, Emerson Review (1983)

“Bill Knott’s first book, ‘The Naomi Poems,’ published in 1968, established him instantaneously as one of the finest poets in America.  Subsequent publications deepened and reinforced that reputation.”
—Andrei Codrescu, The Baltimore Sun (1983)

“[Knott’s poems are] shrouded almost always in the glaring and polluted light William Burroughs foresaw with such brilliance in ‘Naked Lunch.’  In fact, Knott, Poet of Interzone, is the poet Burroughs seemed to call for in his seminal novel. . . . Knott is one of a handful of original poets working today.  His genius suits the times better than any poet I’ve read . . .”               
—Robert Peters, Los Angeles Times (1983)

“With the death of Berryman, Knott seems to me to be the chief embodiment in language today of Mallarmé’s spirit. . .”
—John Vernon, Western Humanities Review (1976)

“. . . Knott's originality as a poet: he is absurd and classical and surrealist all at once.  A marvelously impossible animal.”
—Paul Zweig, Contemporary Poetry in America (1974)

“At his best, Knott is a kind of surreal classicist. . . . He is already a formidable poet.”
—Karl Malkoff, Crowell’s Handbook of Contemporary
                      American Poetry (1974)

“[Knott’s] images are astonishing.  Whatever you may think of Knott’s poems, they have not been written before by anyone else. . . . Poetry such as this strikes me as extending our awareness.”
—Louis Simpson, New York Times Book Review (1969)

“Bill Knott is one of the most remarkable poets to appear since James Wright and James Dickey.”
—Ralph J. Mills, Jr., Poetry (1969)

“I think [Bill Knott] is one of the best poets I know.”
—James Wright, blurb for The Naomi Poems (1968)

“I think the most significant group of young poets are those published in Choice and The Sixties, and the most impressive of these is certainly William Knott.”
—Kenneth Rexroth, Harper’s Magazine (June 1965)

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