The Unsubscriber; Poems

by Bill Knott

• ISBN13: 9780374264154
• ISBN10: 0374264155
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2004-10-13
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

Eavesdroppers fear the hermit's soliloquy. Wake up, wound, the knife said. --from "To Live By" Bill Knott's poetic manner--surreal yet vernacular, outrageous and tender--is unlike anything in contemporary American verse. InThe Unsubscriber, he investigates cloning laboratories and spaceships, cemeteries and battlefields, talks to Damocles and pokes fun at Hamlet, witnesses the moments before a seduction, and charts maps in the stars and in forests. Knott tells fables, poses questions, shadows spies, and breathes new life into poetry's oldest stories: love and war.The Unsubscriberis the first new book in a decade by a fiercely iconoclastic American poet deserving of a wide audience.

Author Biography

Bill Knott is the author of ten previous volumes of poetry, including his groundbreaking first book, The Naomi Poems (1968), and Laugh at the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969-1999. He is an associate professor at Emerson College.

Table of Contents

ONE
The Unsubscriber	3	(1)
Paradise	4	(1)
Neckognition	5	(1)
By the River Baab	6	(1)
Poem (A kite in the shape . . .)	7	(1)
Circus: Aerialists	8	(1)
The Word	9	(2)
Suite (to Hoku)	11	(1)
As Usual	12	(1)
Group Photograph (The Early Years)	13	(1)
No Italics	14	(3)
Dream amid Bed-Woods	17	(1)
Actors: The Denouement	18	(1)
Sub/Unsub	19	(1)
The Answer	20	(1)
Poem (Can my clone cast . . .)	21	(1)
Labmarks	22	(1)
A Lesson from the Orphanage	23	(1)
Extended	24	(1)
Poem (His eyes devoid him of the end . . .)	25	(1)
Extinguishable	26	(1)
Elementary Lesson	27	(2)
Romance (Hendecasyllabics)	29	(1)
Two Poems to S.	30	(2)
Winter Regrets	32	(1)
Succession	33	(1)
True Story	34	(1)
Monodrama	35	(1)
Echo Near the End	36	(1)
To Ripley (Alien 1--4)	37	(1)
De-evolution of the Poet in Rumor's House	38	(1)
The Flaw	39	(1)
Octnov Again	40	(1)
Relics with Old Blue Medicine-Type Bottle: To X	41	(6)
TWO: AN INTERLUDE OF SHORT POEMS
Shower	47	(1)
Overnight Freeze	47	(1)
Poem (Even when the streets are empty . . .)	47	(1)
Enlightenment or Senility?	48	(1)
Poem (Octopus floating . . .)	48	(1)
A Stroll in the Country	48	(1)
Sic Transit	49	(1)
Weighed	49	(1)
Crux	49	(1)
My Life	50	(1)
Orbit	50	(1)
Octnov	50	(1)
Night Thought	51	(1)
Wrong	51	(1)
Knot (Hendecasyllabics)	51	(1)
Or Not to Be	52	(1)
Stumped	52	(1)
A Medium to Doubters	52	(1)
Poem (The most private part of the clock . . .)	53	(1)
Contrivance	53	(1)
Post	53	(1)
Poem (Fingerprints look like ripples . . .)	54	(1)
Old Joke from the Ted & Syl Show	54	(1)
Another Resurrection	54	(1)
Seance	55	(1)
Flash	55	(1)
Poem (Doesn't each tree throw . . .)	55	(1)
Slum Scene	56	(1)
Bad Habit	56	(1)
Vows	56	(1)
Message	57	(1)
Lovelade	57	(1)
Poem (Dear boys and girls . . .)	57	(1)
4 Transversions of Goethe's Wanderers Nachtlied II	58	(3)
THREE
Navel	61	(1)
Portrait	62	(2)
Poem that Wants to Be Ash	64	(1)
Excerpts from the Diary of Damocles	65	(5)
Wedding Party	70	(1)
Salon Poem in Leafgravure	71	(1)
To Live By	72	(1)
Forthfable	73	(1)
The Sightstop	74	(1)
Heilstyles	75	(1)
Rock Picked Up from the Beach	76	(1)
Space	77	(1)
Cemetery	78	(1)
Later/Literal	79	(1)
From a Distance	80	(1)
Parable from Childhood	81	(1)
Stretch	82	(1)
Merry-No-Round	83	(1)
Step On It	84	(1)
Mrs. Frye and the Pencilsharpener	85	(3)
(Poem) (Posthumous) (Poem)	88	(1)
The Dawning	89	(1)
Face in the Window	90	(1)
First Sight	91	(1)
Dearth Demise	92	(1)
(L)id	93	(1)
(Since It Is Intended for the Elite Only)	94	(1)
A Suite from Summer/Autumn 2001	95	(10)
FOUR: POEMS AFTER
Peace (Pascal)	105	(1)
On the Road (Kerouac)	106	(1)
First Thing	107	(1)
Compact Dusk	108	(1)
After Borges's ``To a Minor Poet of 1899''	109	(1)
Poem for Georg Trakl	110	(1)
Transversion of Trakl's Ein Winterabend	111	(1)
The End	112	(1)
Mizu No Oto	113	(1)
The Singular (Nonasyllabics)	114	(1)
To Jose Lezama Lima	115	(1)
Story of Or	116	(1)
Transhendeculous	117	(1)
Gimme Shelter	118	(2)
The Four Views	120	(1)
Sureties	121	(1)
Alfonsina Storni	122