Becos: Poems

James Wright has written about Bill Knott's "indispensable poems, poems that no one else could write" that they are "likely to endure long after most of our contemporary smoke has done me the unintended but nevertheless genuine personal favor of simply drying up and blowing away." Becos is the eighth book, and the first to appear from a major publisher, by a poet who has long been recognized as one of the truly original voices of his generation. Knott is our Rimbaud, our most and challenging poéte maudit. His new work displays wild surrealism, gallows humor, tenderness, anguish and wit, and a deep familiarity with the Western poetic tradition. It is exuberant, extravagant, untamable and outrageous - and an enduring contribution to American letters.