The quicken tree

Bill Knott first received public attention with The Naomi Poems in 1968. His poetry startles us, drawing from a potent mix of his American roots and the French Symbolists in a crucible of a surreal imagination. The author of several collections, Knott always stands apart from current conventions, fascinated by the verbal texture of language, fusing ideas and images that challenge and bedazzle. The Quicken Tree is replete with poems that stretch the traditional boundaries of love: consummated, unrequited and failed. Other poems, given to fictional characters, settings and circumstances, evade traditional genre definitions.