The first time I seriously studied poetry was in college at UIC, circa 1988. My first poetry workshop was with Paul Carroll. When I signed up for the class, I didn’t know who he was, but I quickly found out that he was the editor of Big Table, which made Young American Poets, my favorite collection of "real" poets and a touchstone book to this day. He also was the first to publish Naked Lunch, and was at the center of the landmark First Amendment case with the US Postal Service for distributing obscene materials. Paul Carroll was a legend, and I got to hang out with him while he held court twice a week in a cold asphalt block classroom south of downtown Chicago. I fucking loved it.
Anyway, Paul Carroll’s favorite poet was Bill Knott. I was knocking around on Thax Douglas’ MySpace a few weeks ago and he linked me to Bill Knott. Lo & behold he’s got a TypePad blog. And on it he rants mightily about the state of poetry publishing. In short, it is awful. This is one of our giants. He basically says this:
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my position right now (maybe I’ll change it six months from now; i’m
nothing if not) is that i will never "publish" anything anywhere in any
mag or book of any kind if I can help it, i will publish nothing
nowhere but on my blog….because what the fuck’s the point of me publishing (or trying to
publish) in print anymore when I can put it all here on the blog. . .seriously
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And I saw here he offered up his latest book via PDF for free. I wrote to him. He sent it to me. This is one of our giants, Bill Knott. All hail.