Is it just me, or does Bill Knott kick ass?
Just look at this final stanza from
HITLER SKELETON GOLDPLATED:
My cock/my KGB has it on lasertape
The moon posing between the horns of a bull
Two hymens touching through milk
This really is something amazing and political in the best sense I can imagine, in fact I could not have imagined this poem at all. I have tried to talk to this guy, and maybe I guess he is a dick, but he writes wonderfully.
My exegesis of this would necessarily be my own, but I think it has alot of transubjective power.
His connection of "My cock / my KGB" is superlative, and echoes things like
the bronze penis-headed rooster kept in the Vatican whose plaque reads, SAVIOR OF THE WORLD, which just oozes horror and irony and Masoniconspiracy. In this context I would even be willing to put forth an alternate meaning for KGB, ie
KONSTANT (kunst-ant) (Re)Generative Being ie The Political Inflectioning
of the Copula (cock) which is at the root (literally) of all language based cultus(k)
ie blind producting or violent sodomitial meataophorce..
Bill, I know I am just some vector of primordial slop to you, but your writing
is pretty friggin' badass! I commend you!
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Bill Knott does indeed kick the asses.
ReplyDeleterecently, a reknown'd Atlanta art critic sd this, speaking about trying to get the Atlanta artscene together:
“When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to remember you came here to drain the swamp.”
& some faves from Bill Knot :
PAINTING VS. POETRY
Painting is a person placed
between the light and a
canvas so that their shadow
is cast on the canvas and
then the person signs their
name on it whereas poetry
is the shadow writing its
name upon the person.
*
In reality, of course, poetry is the most abject, the lowest of the arts. The most ignored, the least recognized and honored, the least rewarded. Count the millionaire novelists around the globe, the millionaire painters and scriptwriters, the multimillionaires of music . . . the wealth that accumulates around all the arts but poetry. And ask yourself, poet, what you have in common with them. They hate you, you know it: they despise you. They have nothing but contempt for you. All the other arts look down with disgust at poetry. When will you turn that contempt back at them? When will you scorn them, and deny them the commendation they refuse you. (Oh yes, they all offer lipservice specious praise to poetry, smirking behind their hands at the hypocrisy of the gesture that costs them nothing.) Even poets (you know this too) hate poetry, and disdain poets. How can we not hate ourselves and hate each other; we're poets, we're slaves: Genet said it best, in The Maids: "When slaves love each other, it's not love they feel." Poetry is the slave of the arts, and poets are slaves to the prosewriter and the painter, and even more to the molochs of music. What kind of slave reveres and worships its oppressors? The masochist kind portrayed by Genet: the poet kind.
But hey, don't let me stop you, poets. Go on, go ahead and kiss-ass praise the millionaire Pynchon, the millionaire Jasper Johns, praise all the success-practitioners of the Master arts, the crumbs from their tables may fill you yet. It's your duty as slaves to curry favor with those above you, to flatter and obsequiate your betters. And praise most those writers who began as poets but abandoned poetry, who betrayed poetry for the chance to move up the foodchain of the arts, after all if you could hum a tune you too might get rich like Leonard Cohen and fuck moviestars; you'd do it if you could, wouldn't you. Of course you would. Because, let's face it, who would want to be a poet when they could be a novelist or a songwriter or a screenwriter or a rockstar or a Cindy Sherman or a what's his name, that Brit artist who cuts sharks in half,—who would want to remain a poet, the lowest puke on the cultural totempole? Only a fool, a masochist, a scumbag, who can't weasel their way into any of the real arts, who has to sink to the bottom of the bard-barrel, the pegasus-dregs. Poetry, the most ignored, the least compensated of the arts. . . but you already know this; why am I wasting my time telling you what you already know.
*
TO JOSÉ LEZAMA LIMA
The poem is a letter opener that slices
a to discover b in which c waits
and so on until z reiterates
my metaphor’s acute dullness, its crisis
of belief: say this knife could core its way
past the final alphabet and penetrate
that rind that blinds us with its consummate
yield of polished inveighed truths which betray
nothing of the stuffing, the seeds that rot
innate tumors of meaning, enemy
rumors amassed across your desk each morning—
what if that surfeit of words was a warning
label only, just another skin to be
cut? And all this is unless the poem is not.
Note:
Line 10-11: 'enemy rumors': Lezama Lima's second book of poems was entitled Enemigo rumor.
*
How I Created and Then Published My Collaborative Chapbook with My Own Micropress and Made All My Chapbook Dreams Come True
is the headline of a long post today in the blog of young poet Reb Livingston (google "Home-Schooled by a cackling jackal")——
I should admire and applaud her efforts,
but I'm sorry to say I think private individual projects like hers are largely shortsighted and misguided:
one might say they treat the symptoms, not the disease.
The problem is systemic, and should be attacked on a systemic level——
poetry is the least-funded of the arts,
and that underfunding occurs in a culture/society
which of course underfunds all the arts to some degree,
but poetry suffers the worse——
in today's NYTimes Arts section, extensive reports appear on the New York City Opera and the MTV Video Awards etc, in other words the important arts are covered in depth and detail,
whereas as usual not a word about poetry or poetry news (Cider Press brouhaha, anyone?)——
page B2, below the fold:
"Guggenheim to receive $1 Million Award"——
"The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation announced that it has been selected for a $1 million special award from the National Endowment for the Humanities for its coming exhibition 'The Third Mind: American Artists contemplate Asia . . .' at the Guggenheim Museum" . . .
Livingston in a recent post estimated the amount paid by USA poets (USAPOs for short) to enter book contests is yearly one million dollars . . .
USAPOs whine complain about paying these fees to little-press publishers . . . the publishers whine complain about having to charge these fees in order to pay for the cost of printing the books . . . it's a vicious circle-jerk where no one gets off . . .
and nobody in USAPO it seems gets frustrated enough to actually attack the root problem,
which is the normative underfunding of poetry by the cultural powers and dominions . . .
The foundations and institutions have the money, but they're not giving it to poetry——
that's the basic cause. And USAPO won't do anything to change that——
they won't unite and fight for their due.
They won't picket the Guggenheim Museum/Foundation (or the NEH) in protest, they won't urge a boycott of this exhibit, they won't plaster this event with leaflets demanding equal funding for poetry——
which incidently I'm only mentioning because it's in today's paper, it's only an illustration, an example of so many other misappropriations——
Yes, misappropriation, because this million bucks should be the million bucks Livingston speaks of——
this million (and so much more) should be going to USAPO——
but hey, USAPOs don't want that money, really, do they, they want to live via the old virtues of self-reliance,
look at Livingston for example——
she's not a lazybum welfare-queen waiting for a handout from the government, she's not sitting on her duff waiting for a topdown endowment,
no, she's doing it the good-old-fashioned American way,
the "small business model," the "mom-and-pop shop" that made this country great,
she's doing it solo, she's being an entrepreneur . . . and how apt the title of her blog:
"home-schooled" . . . home-schooling: yes, that's the philosophy advocated by the Christian Conservatives that lead this nation,
isn't it? (check next week's Republican convention for further extollments of this ideal.)—
As opposed to public enterprise, collective economy . . . ?
*
as I say above, I'm plucking the Guggie exhibit out of today's paper and using it as an example
(check tomorrow's paper for more news about the nonfunding-of-poetry: it's a daily feature)——
and ditto I'm using Reb Livingston as an example plucked out, for which I apologize——
and I hope she won't be offended when I say I think that that million dollars now going to the museum
should instead be going to her
and to other young poets like her——
*
PS.
and to those of you saying, What good is picketing the Guggie going to do——
see the opening of this exhibit, our Borgias there in their Medici masks,
in their pride,
and that's where you have to hit them, in their pride——
because their pose is to be patrons of the arts,
they self-esteem themselves on how highminded how elite that patronage proves they are——
it's part of their PR—
but now a picketline of poets screams curses at them,
a gauntlet of poets hurls leaflets and posters and gets handcuffed mass-arrested
for disturbing the hauteur of smug Maecenas——
for puncturing that complacent aura of Kultur——
and if you reply, Well that won't work, that will just make them hate poets——
really? Hey, they already hate you, in case you didn't notice——
or did you imagine their policy of having poetry be the worst-funded of all the arts
is because they love you best of all the arts,
is that your ironic theory?——
Attacking them with protests at the museum or the concert hall or the opera house,
lying down in those aisles and galleries with passive resistance nonviolent refusal to move (we shall not be moved)——
no, that may not work——
but what you're doing now, does that work?——
sucking up to them, petitioning them, filling out their insipid applications, is that effective——
is that getting poetry funded at the level it deserves——?
Instead of kissing their asses, start kicking them——
they'll never love you, but maybe you can make them fear you——
and if they fear you, they'll fund you ——
maybe.
*
TO MYSELF
How often does your penis
enter your armpit, not enough I bet;
and automaxillary eroticism
will not suffice. Such intercourse
or rather lack of it shows up
in the cast of your crap, your typical
excuses, your ineptitude charades—
But all orifices get worn out, so even
a rarely-fucked armpit longs for less;
as does the face, held together
by what coercion of emptiness;
an oral shoehorn probably;
maybe-berries dipped in occurence-curd:
the evasions are always exemplary.
*
RESUMED PLEA
To pick up where I left off
at birth,
as I was about to say before
being interrupted by
the midwife,
my parents,
my teachers,
my commanding officer,
my employers,
my various wives/children etc.,
my physician,
one or two astrologers,
and the undertaker:
"Free me or worship me!"
*
The world of Art mirrors the world of Society. Just as the latter is based on hierarchy, on
a class system, so is the former.
And in the world of Art, poetry is the lowest class.
In the world of Art, poets are the proles, the slaves.
Just as slaves in the world of Society are bullied and beaten, treated as subhuman, so in the world of Art poets are similarly abused.
All the wealth/value produced by Society's slaves is stolen from them by those in the higher classes. The latter grow rich on the former's misery.
Every idea or good generated by poet-labor is also stolen, plagiarized by the higher classes of Music, Painting, Film and Prose. They prosper on the poet's back. All their wealth comes from stealing and using what the poet-slave produces.
*
As slaves, poets internalize their inferior status. We grovel before the Masters of Music Painting Film and Prose. We become their lickspittles, their toadies, their dogs, obsequiously grateful for the least crumb falling from their fat tables.
We flatter kiss-ass praise these Masters for their greatness, forgetting that every good every gram of worth they possess, every virtue, was stolen from us.
*
From time to time the slaves of Society have risen up against their evil Masters, have rebelled against their oppressors.
But the slaves of Art, the poets, have they ever revolted against their oppressive Masters?
Never.
We have never tried to rip off our chains. We have never protested against the Prosewriters the Filmmakers the Musicmucks the Painters,
the Masters who daily steal our resources, we have never tried to expose their criminal acts of theft and exploitation.
No, we never even dream of rising up in fury to confront and attack these overlords whose cabals conspire against our welfare, whose cultural institutions and media are designed and operated to keep us in penury and abject submission. Whose statutes of power stand ready to cripple and punish and murder us. As they have done so often.
December 17, 2006
IDOL-ALLS
Our tongue is the skeleton of the voice
whose body fills the ears of Echo who
did Jove a favor and got fucked over
for it. To worship the Enfant Elvis is
not easier, his vowel, his shrill cries
amaze us, make us doubt/double this quest
for deities . . . Speaking of which:
for the marriage of Pollack and Plath
—step on the gas, turn on the gas—
"what ceremony?" (Hart Crane). Oh quote! You
narciss-focus us/show forth a love
our moans can cut-to-cue, the classic choice.
If applause divided is hands, a face
multiplied must be a movie? Yes. Yes.
*
O boohoo! I worked in a factory most of my adult life so far. If one expects very little from people, then when something good happens it's much easier to appreciate.. You'd have to be a nimnull to go into poetry to make a mainstream style living, and if there weren't nearly 7 billion people on the planet one might expect it to be different.. I like Bill's writing, but as for all the poltiical crap, my life is too short to get overly emotionally involved with it. Do you purposely want to cultivate, how do you say,
ReplyDeletea crappy day.
I think the average Bangladeshi
has that one beat hands down..
Believe me, I know my share of poor painters, poor script-writers, poor sculptors..
some of this is just really whiney and wack man..
= )
ReplyDeletewell, i prefer to view his rants as being piss'd off & not afraid to voice his opinion, as opposed to just crybaby whining.
Richard Prince's Man-Crazy Nurse recently sold for $7.4 million at Christie's.
& Sotheby's as well continues to profit on long-dead artists, one of the highlights of the summer season being Monet's Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil sell for $41.5 million.
house commissions =
25% of the first $20,000
20% of the next $20,000 to $500,000
& 12% of the rest.
i just wish there'd be more exhibitions of book-arts & written things in general, or better arts-funding in the u.s.a.
i understand what yr sayin' about the wantin' to go mainstream thing tho, as some stand-up comic somewhere sed :
" i went 6 years to get a phd in philosophy, i was so surprised when i got finished that none of the big philosophy companies were hiring."
i don't think any of the big poetry companies are hiring either...
actually, Lanny, your erudition and probably perception outweighs my own, which is aged and redundant . .. in any case, thanks for your kind words . . .
ReplyDeleteBK
as i quote on my blog yesterday, Valery says "Lyricism is the elaboration of an exclamation" which provoked Breton so much he retorted it: "Lyricism is the elaboration of a protest."
the elaboration is what
the varying schools have in common, perhaps...