Tag Bill Knott

* contemplating one-sidedness via bill knott

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

This week’s poem is another gem from Bill Knott.

I’m always happy to run into poems that take on an overlooked part of life and refresh it, make it new by simple acknowledgement. In the case of Knott’s poem “Paradise,” the act of reading a book with facing translations is blown up for the meeting of worlds and circumstances that it is. The choice of words to describe what he terms “Righthandland” – gutter, damned, pulp, tongue – and what it means to dwell as a reader in one language with only glimpses of the original is spot-on. Enjoy!

* the music facing *

* notes from Lefthandland *

Paradise – Bill Knott

Always reading the recto
translation of a verso
original, my eye fades.
I notice how the paper
here on this side seems
darker than its opposite:
it is brighter over there
on the lefthand page, the
words of the real poem
give it that glow which
the prized act of creation
emits.  We who must live
here in Righthandland
are damned no matter
how hard we try to rhyme
minds with that perfect
realm across the gutter.
Even if our pulp comes
from the same stock,
we fear closing the book
will bring us face to face,
mouth to mouth with
that tongue we’ve always
lost, and can never kiss.

***

Happy nevering!

Jose

* rivering via bill knott

José Angel Araguz 2 Comments

This week’s poem is another Bill Knott gem.

What moves me most about it is how it stirs up from mere words a whole fabulistic world from a distance, and, by the end of the poem, brings the world closer to the reader, as close as the glass of water in hand that makes up the final image.

Seeing as the poem involves rivers meeting (and not meeting), this week’s image is of the confluence of the Rhone and Arve River in Geneva, Switzerland.

* the friday confluence *

* a friday confluence *

By the River BAAB – Bill Knott

We know that somewhere far north of here
the two rivers Ba and Ab converge to form
this greater stream that sustains us, uniting
the lifeblood length of our lands: and we believe
that the Ba’s sources is heaven, the Ab’s hell.

Daily expeditions embark upcountry to find
that fork, to learn where the merge first occurs.
Too far: none of our explorer’s return.  Or
else when they reach that point they themselves
are torn apart by a sudden urge to choose –

to resolutely take either the Ba/the Ab, to trace
good or evil to its spring.  Each flips a coin
perhaps, or favors whichever one the wind’s
blowing from at that moment.  Down here
even we who have not the heart to venture

anywhere that would force us to such deep
decisions, even we, when we hold that glass of
water in our hand, drink it slowly, deliberately,
as if we could taste the two strains, could somehow
distinguish their twin flow through our veins.

***

Happy veining!

Jose