DDCPoetry

Original Analysis found here:  Analysis of "To X" " Poem found here:  "To X" by Bill Knott The first four lines state the same thing, well, by definition.  What makes the first four lines of the poem interesting is how simply the tone changes through the repetition.  A build up of importance, or romance.  The anaphora of “Somewhere” brings a sense of searching — and what is the speaker searching throughj: “history,” “untold ages,” “the sands of time,” “the vast sea of eternity.”  It’s comic, but romantic.  It’s a speaker who is writing in fantastical hyperbole. Love creates strange writings. “There is one person / Only one.”  The repeating of the “only one” is the turn in the poem.  If this was another sappy love poem then the comparison would be more grandiose, the emotions amplified to the point of comic.  Here the attention turns to the tone of the speaker. “Who could understand me and love me / And your’re it/ So get with it.” The re...

Bill Knott would probably be mad at me for writing a blog about him.  I also believe that he would revel in the fact that someone is writing about him and leave in the comments section something like this, "You are a dumbass nobody writing about another dumbass nobody who is an exile in the po-biz.  Write when you are somebody." Being somebody will probably never happen, so please excuse me for the following piece. As an undergraduate I asked my mentor, Alan Soldofsky, who I write like.  I studied haiku and the short form for years and I felt at that time I pushed as far as I could.  Bill Knott is who he said, and, from his memory, Alan quoted these two poems to me: Goodbye If you are still alive when you read this, close your eyes.  I am under their lids, growing black. Death Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest They will place my hands like this. It will look as though I am flying into myself. These poems resonate because the images are so succinct, bu...