The Unsubscriber; Poems

by Bill Knott

• ISBN13: 9780374530143
• ISBN10: 0374530149
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2006-04-18
• 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

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