Understanding the work of Bill Knott is a complex subject. To get inside his writing, to truly grasp it- we must get inside Knott’s head and understand him first. When I first read the poem “SUICIDAL THOUGHTS AFTER BEING DENIED A GUGGENHEIM GRANT FOR THE 11th TIME”, in attempts to analyze it, I did not understand a thing. Naturally, I later learned that this is inevitable because from a young age we are taught to dissect writing, we crave to make meaning out of things- to translate it into our own language. With Knott’s work, this is quite the challenge. To aid me to make meaning of this piece as well as establish how we make meaning of things, I turned to chapters of “The Triggering Town” By Richard Hugo, other classic poems I’ve analyzed, as well as studied traditional roles of analyzing that we established socially (student-teacher relationships).

A piece of writing is handed to you in class- poem, story, chapter, or even a book. Our instant “instinct”, almost is to dissect this writing. Richard Hugo, writer of “The Triggering Town”, warns against over analyzing writing and explains the dangers of it in “Writing Off the Subject”. He wrote that over analyzing writing diminishes the meaning of it, and most of the time, it is analyzed wrong. We assign a certain meaning to something that was never there in the first place. This happens very often in creative writing classes- where a piece of writing written by a student will be critiqued. Often students analyze the work to its core- finding hidden “motifs”, metaphors, and references. Authors often do not intend for these to be found. Often, students make them up on their own because they are convinced there is something more to a peice always, like something is hidden and must be uncovered. This is exactly what I started to do when reading my assigned Bill Knott poem, “SUICIDAL THOUGHTS AFTER BEING DENIED A GUGGENHEIM GRANT FOR THE 11th TIME”.

I noticed that Knott wrote this poem in sentences which differs from his other poems because they do not have punctuation. Some do. Some don’t. I believe his inconsistency on that frontier is intentional. Each individual sentence is its own separate thought. However, they all connect back to one main message which is explained in the title- suicidal thoughts. Knott is essentially contemplating life.The line “War headlines and peace tailstanzas don’t like to feel real.”can be traced back to Knott’s personal life, moreso when he was born- in 1940. World War Two had just began, so maybe Knott is referencing the horrors of the ongoing war in his piece. He could also be referring to the war with Vietnam, which better fits the time frame of when Knott was writing this piece. It is even possible Knott was a possible draftee, knowing a draft had been going on at the time. Newspapers wrote about the war so that is where the “headlines” come from. When he writes of “Peace tail stanzas” he is most probably referring to tail-rhyme stanza, which is a stanza consisting of rhymed couplets or triplets with tails that rhyme with each other. Funnily enough, I did not notice any in this poem. However, I think Knott used this term to be more specific. I did not find a connection between the two specifically and I think Knott tried to juxtapose the severity of war and a literary tool to show how real they can be, although often disregarded. In the next sentence, he goes on to talk about “scare tactics”, which are often often used in war, as well as in our everyday life. Knott may be talking about dilemmas going on in one’s head after not getting what we want (Guggenheim grant). He writes “So that, institutionally, a wine corked by the horn of the charging unicorn might?” When I hear the word institutionally, especially combined with the overall mood of this poem, I think of a psychiatric center and the imagery of a corked wine bottle resembles problems bottling up, stuck inside a tightly corked bottle, much like internal problems and problems from the war he previously mentioned. The wine is corked by a charging unicorn, which in my opinion is satirical because unicorns are not real. I believe Knott is trying to say that we are holding in our problems with something non-concrete or tangible.

The reason we as students are inclined to analyze minute details in writing is because when teachers assign readings of poems and stories, we place a certain significance on them. Students automatically assume they hold a higher importance because they have been selected by a teacher. This goes beyond just listening or obeying a teacher. According to “Speaking for the Borderlands Exploring Narratives of Teacher Identity” , we psychologically place a load of importance on teachers and hold them to a higher standard. The chapter states, “There is a fundamental paradox in our cultural model of a teacher, a paradox that affects teacher education: for a teacher to be a hero…” This has been observed in many instances. An experiment was conducted in the chapter resulting in the outcome that stated in order for a teacher to be successful, they must have a personal identity similar of the cultural expectations of a teacher. We often assume teachers know everything- after all, they are the ones teaching us. This shows when they give us writing piece- we place it on a pedestal, higher than others. Culturally speaking, titles like Anna Karenina, Catcher in the Rye , and Jane Eyre have been nationally and globally accredited not only for their undeniable excellence, but also for their habit to appear in lesson plans of teachers, or assigned to students to read and analyze. They become classics and works of writing everyone has read at some point and held on a higher level. Psychologically speaking, if a teacher shows a student something, it has to be good. Many students do believe this.

Bill Knott is a very complex poet, as well as personality, which is why I think I would not normally read his work unless it was assigned to me. I had not heard of him prior to this assignment. Understanding his poetry has been one of the hardest tasks I have been given in this creative writing class. Having a teacher make it mandatory to analyze this poem forced me to read between the lines. Normally, I would be baffled by the words and not even try to make sense of them. Like most people, my first instinct when I do not know a word is to google it. With Knott, I found that he uses words that do not exist. Nothing comes up on google and readers are forced to use context clues to make sense of these words. Some examples of these words are “dumbpan”, “feature-ifice”, and “pig-bladder”.

Knott writes in such an enigmatic tone that readers have different opinions about the piece, but they can also interpret it completely differently. Poetry is abstract, which is its greatest advantage and downfall. Because of its abstractness some crave to assign meaning to it, which it honestly does not always have. Sometimes, the words are just written and that's that. People struggle with the fact that not everything has meaning. Not all poems have to rhyme or as Hugo mentioned, or refer to the subject throughout the whole piece. Hugo states, “Young poets find it difficult to free themselves from the initiating subject.” Some of the greatest works are misunderstood. Authors remain an enigma because no one will really ever knew what they meant. We try to understand, but we may be essentially completely wrong.

As stated in “Poetry as Research and as Therapy”, “ I am beginning to think that the practice of writing poetry engenders a means by which to make sense of the world that cannot be articulated through traditional research practice or venues.” This kind of goes hand in hand with writing about things that seem “incommunicable”. Poetry is by far the most free form of writing making it either something writers love or hate. Using poetry we can take a little concept and blow it up into a big one. This is true to all writing honestly. The pace of writing is very interesting. A talented or experienced writer is able to write a story describing a single moment. This is very difficult. To explain the unexplainable: those phenomenons that occur, but cannot be put into words. Knott manages to write a poem articulating his pain or better said, “Suicidal thoughts”, after being denied a Guggenheim grant (which he was). What I noticed about Knott is he alludes to his personal life a lot, and readers or students who study him individually along with his work make sense of this. His title directly explained what the rest of the poem was about.

I believe Knott was bitter about not receiving the grant. The line “The fur opens and my face ain’t” lets the Guggenheim play the role of the fur, something intangible to regular people, something that resembles wealth and status. His face (him) was rejected. I believe he uses the slang word “ain’t” to show the simplicity of his ways, which can be compared to fur, which is notoriously pretentious. When the fur closes, as in the Guggenheim rejects him, “eyes lips nose resume”. He is trying to say everything resumes. I think he means for both the museum and for himself. I think this angered Bill Knott because he desperately wanted the grant and recognition. I am specifically drawn to the way Knott paired the words “wretched” and “perfection”. This shows the raw hurt emotion festering inside of Knott. How can perfection possibly be wretched? Maybe when it denies you the grant you were hoping to get. I believe when he refers to the “dumbpan plan” he is talking about his plan to get the grant, his notion that he would succeed. At the end of the line, he refers to it as a “lack of choice”.

While trying to make sense of Knott’s work, I am reminded of the poem “The Harlem Dancer” By Claude McKay because he was able to essentially musically and visually describe a scene. The essence of the poem enthralls the reader and makes them feel like they are part of the scene. McKay describes a single act: the woman dancing. However, he traps you in a moment, where every detail and every move matters. I feel like if an inexperienced writer was writing this they would simply say, “The woman danced in the club.” An author’s ability to induce thoughts after a piece has been written and make the reader think about it after partially determines their success. Knott also finds unique ways of saying simple things. He does this on a more extreme level, where understanding his work comes with much effort.

For example, in the third stanza, Knott talks about clinging to virgin. He does not say “a” virgin, but many would assume the very literal meaning. Why wouldn’t we? This word does not come with many literal meaning. That is just the thing about Knott. He is all about the subconscious and finding or even inventing double meanings for words. When he says he clings to virgin I believe he means his hopes, dreams, and wholesome aspirations. However this “virgin” is ruined in some ways. His dreams have been ruined. The veil, traditionally worn on front of the virgin bride’s face is scraped, ruined, or tarnished. His dreams are ruined. He speaks of scars and calls them an armour of absence. Scars are an interesting metaphor because they represent what we have been through. They are living proof that lasts forever. In a way they make us stronger because they remind of of what we have been through, both emotionally and physically. Scars do not necessary have to be physical in this case they just represent past troubles. They make us stronger, which is why Knott refers to them as armor.

When doing the cut up activity, my partner and I did not have ideas about the poem beforehand. Rather, we layed out all the words (we cut up each word) and just shuffled them around until we arranged it in an order we liked. Often, when I write stories or poems I do not think to include hidden motifs or messages throughout my work. I often never do. When my peice was getting peer critiqued, I noticed classmates of mine analyzing to the point where they found hidden relationships between characters and ascribed personality traits to characters I didn't even know they had. They were almost positive I had written these aspects in intentionally, but I had not. This similarly happens to many of the peer critiqued pieces and I personally think this over analyzation is overzealous. However, this makes me question my own analyzations of poems. We set ourselves up to only understand works if they are straightforward and tell instead of show.

Do authors of poems intentionally write so the margins of our papers will be filled with endless annotations or thoughts, or do almost random thoughts pour onto their papers? As previously mentioned, if a piece can be talked about and leaves readers with thoughts after it is finished- it has done its job. This is what separates work that we read in class as opposed to works that just fly by and do not really get noticed. I think this is why teachers pick certain pieces for us to discuss and dissect. I think talented writers fill up their stories and poems chock full of references. Bill Knott, for example, wrote very complicated heavy work. To a person who has read his poem once, it looks like the result of stringing together random words.

The last stanza, and my favorite, is the saddest. Knott calls life a failure, and that is a line not open to interpretation. If it was not clear to the reader before this point, it now is. This is a very dark poem. Knott writes about being “tangled in whiskey” which can be a reference to his possible alcoholism. Usually when people drink, they do it to escape sorrow. The last line leaves readers aghast by the deep words Knott has written. “The night has no thoughts heavier than itself.” This means that Knott is left trapped by his own thoughts. They may eat him alive. Scary thoughts have a way to crawling into our minds at night, when we are most vulnerable. He is left at night, attacked by all his suicidal thoughts.

Annotations and analyzations can be our worst and best enemy; they can distract us from the bigger picture or open up secret hidden meanings. As Hugo suggested, it is important to keep your boundaries and not overthink.

Knott’s work can be taken very literally, to the point where you can connect every line back to his life and assume what he was thinking, or very generally. For this paper, I have chosen the very literal line by line analyzation. The problem with this is it may not be correct. Knott may not have been using fur to represent the museum. What I am sure of however, is that in this poem Knott made it very clear that dreams can be crushed. We are not always accepted and wanted, along with our ideas. Even the most perfect things can be shattered. Life can fail us and we are left to reflect on it all.