The Naomi Poems, Book One: Corpse and Beans

by Bill Knott

“Bill Knott writes stunning poems in which he wires the head to the heart in such surprising ways that the results are truly electrifying. More than anyone of his generation, he shows us just how wild American poetry can be.” —Billy Collins “A perfect asshole wonderpoet. . . .find and buy a book of Knott’s” —Richard Hell The debut collection from Bill Knott that influenced a generation of poets and rockstars is now back-in-print for the first time in almost 60 years. Bill Knott’s first book, The Naomi Corpse and Beans , was written under the pen name St. Geraud, the fictional persona of “a virgin and a suicide” who allegedly died two years prior to publication. The Naomi Poems was received to great acclaim and brought him to the attention of such poets as James Wright, who called Knott  an "unmistakable genius." It also went on to inspire generations of fellow writers—from James Tate to Mary Ruefle to Denis Johnson. While first editions have become treasured collector’s items today, and its poems mixed and remixed into numerous anthologies over the decades, The Naomi Poems is finally available in its original form for the first time since its original publication.

Genres: Poetry

61 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Bill Knott spent most of his youth in Chicago. He also taught poetry at Columbia College in Chicago in the early 1970s.

His first book was The Naomi Poems, published in 1968, under the pseudonym Saint Giraud. His many books of poetry include Auto-necrophilia, Love Poems To Myself, Rome in Rome, The Quicken Tree, Selected and Collected Poems, and Laugh At the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969–1999.

He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003. He is currently an associate professor of English at Emerson College in Boston.

In recent years, he has several times made all of his collected poems available for free online.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

DEATH

Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest.
They will place my hands like this.
It will look as though I am flying into myself.


SLEEP

We brush the other, invisible moon.
Its caves come out and carry us inside.


POEM

At your light side trees shy
A kneeling enters them

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

”A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great.” —Randall Jarrell

“If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?” —Emily Dickinson

These are two of my favorite statements about poetry, and, if they are any guide, Bill Knott’s The Naomi Poems, Book One: Corpse and Beans deserves to be considers as a first-class book. Sure, the contents are uneven (the longer the poem, the weaker it seems to be), the presentation is sensational (Knott claims the poems were written by “St. Geraud,” whom he describes as “a virgin and a suicide"), but lightning strikes here, the top of the reader’s head is taken off, at least six, maybe a dozen times in the sixty page book. They are almost all small lightning strikes (I mean the poems are short), but they are real, devastating lightning strikes nonetheless.

Here are six of my favorite lightning strikes. Get the book and find some of your own:

POEM for Maria Helz

When our hands are alone,
they open, like faces.
There is no shore
to their opening.

* * * * *

GOODBYE

if you are alive when you read this,
close your eyes. I am
under their lids, growing black.


* * * * *

POEM

The only response
to a child’s grave is
to lie down before it and play dead

* * * * *

AFTER THE BURIAL

After the burial I alone stood by till a workman came to shovel the dirt back into the hole. There was some left over, the dirt she’d displaced, and they wheeled it off. Drawn, not knowing why, I followed at a distance. Coming to a small backlot, they dumped it, then left. I walked over. It made a small mound. And all around her, similar mounds. Pure cones of joy! First gifts from the dead! I fell to my knees before it, and fell forward on my hands into it . . . to the elbows, like washwater. . . . For the first time, I became empty enough to cry for her.

* * * * *

DEATH

Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest.
They will place my hands like this.
It will look as though I am flying into myself.


* * * * *

SLEEP

We brush the other, invisible moon.
Its caves come out and carry us inside.

[tortoise dreams · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first book by American surrealist poet Bill Knott (1940-2014).

Poetry Review: The Naomi Poems, Book One: Corpse and Beans. The Fall 1966 edition of Epoch, Cornell University's literary magazine, announced, with black borders, "the death by suicide on March 2, 1966," of "St. Giraud [sic] (the pen-name of William Knott)." The announcement mentioned that the suicide note stated that he had killed himself because "I am a virgin ... No girl has ever returned my love ... I am already dead of starvation." The announcement also noted that St. Giraud's literary executor had "edited a posthumous volume of the ... poet's work for publication." Under the heading, "Some Posthumous Poems of St. Geraud," Epoch published a generous 25 poems. Some of those poems appear in The Naomi Poems, Book One: Corpse and Beans, published in 1968 as by "Saint Geraud (1940-1966)." St. Geraud was indeed the pseudonym of Bill Knott, and his next three books, Aurealism (1970), Auto-Necrophilia (1971), and Nights of Naomi (1972), were published as by "Bill Knott (1940-1966)." By 1976 he had stopped appending the dates "(1940-1966)" to his name. For, in fact, it was all a surreal hoax and there was no suicide and neither St. Geraud nor Bill Knott had died in 1966. As noted above, Bill Knott died a few years ago in 2014. This was his first book, published in 1968. The Naomi Poems is very much a product of its time. The author rages repeatedly against the early specter (much worse was to come) of the Vietnam War, but it's also timeless in its love poems and moments of wisdom, tenderness, and genuine sentiment:

"Your eyelashes are a narcotic."

Many of the poems are quite short, and I believe those are the most successful pieces:

"The only response
to a child's grave is
to lie down before it and play dead"

There are also longer poems, which tend to embrace a more surreal, angry, political, and contemporary feel. There are poems of "sleep, death, desire," but also vulgar and iconoclastic poems. He condemns other poets as defending the War, and writes the least "poetic" poems possible:

"To read the future, gaze into your crystal asshole."

No rules or manners inhibit him from saying his piece. Even the poems that may not work well, still work because of their reach. Because they tried and if they failed on some level they failed gloriously. Even the poems that seem opaque (my personal adversary), I trust in Knott that they are not simply words thrown together, but contain a deeper meaning capable of discovery. He works that hard at his poems. There are three themes that arise and explode throughout: there is the political, the world created by the war in Vietnam; there is death, whether from Knott's childhood as an orphan or the war, or both, death is a constant refrain; there is Naomi, his muse, his love, both flesh and fantasy simultaneously. The Naomi Poems, Book One: Corpse and Beans is a passionate and striking book, incredible that it could've been written in 1966, and also inevitable that it was written in 1966. In later years, Bill Knott made all his work available for free on the internet, where I believe it may still be found. Note that the subtitle is an homage to the book of poetry Corps et biens (1930) ["body and property" or "body and goods"] by French surrealist poet Robert Desnos (1900-45), who died in the Terezín concentration camp, after having previously been interned in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. [5★]

[Vicky · Rating 5 out of 5]

good stuff, man, good stuff

"
To read the future,
gaze in your future asshole
"

and

"
GOODBYE
If you are still alive
when you read this,
close your eyes. I am
under their lids, growing black
"

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning little collection, a mix of horny virginal longing, surreal imagery of violence and war, and metafictional references to leading poets of the day. Great to see this reissued by Black Ocean (complete with a Richard Hell introduction), and highly recommend snagging a copy.

[Chezzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The two stamps on the envelope says that I was the first person to check this book outta the school library since 22 May 1972. It's believable in the envelope itself, the absolutely ancient dried glue of which quickly let it come detached.

It's apparent in many of these poems that this Saint Geraud (aka Bill Knott) was quite opinionated about the Vietnam war. If that was my era I think it would have had a bigger impact, but it wasn't. I still really like how he wasn't afraid of being crude or brusque. His writing has an edge.

[Michael P. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Time has not been kind to Saint Guraud's first book. Today, many of these poems reflect the worst excesses of the anti-war movement with references to baby killers, to give just one example. He shows a childish desire to shock by calling Napalm "afterbirth," and gives eye-rolling exaggerations, such as finding Vietnam in Chicago. Most condemning, to me at any rate, are the stylistic excesses, rightly mocked by the next generation of poets and in the popular culture of the time, and the ego that oozes out of every line. Feh.

[Lucas Friedman-Spring · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite bad

[Ryan Broughman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I turned the page to read the next poem to find a blank page, and then another and I experienced a longing for more in the realization that I so casually experienced the last. The unwanted finality of the last interaction with the living settling in upon news of their death.

An exceptional poet whose voice was a haunting ghost in life and is still there "under our closed eyes growing black..."

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

When this book was first published in 1968, it knocked my English major socks off. Some of the short poems are still spectacular, but the anti-Vietnam War poems that were then so compelling now seem dated. Nonetheless, it's still a marvelous collection.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many thanks to Black Ocean for bringing this strange masterpiece back into print.

VOI(POEM)CES

"mercy. . . mercy‘" From face to face
a child's voice bounces, lower and lower;
continues to quest
underground.

Bloodspurts lessening. . . hoofbeats of animals
stalked to their birth by the sun, fade. It is a bright
edgeless morning, like a knife that to be cleaned
is held under a vein.

I blink away the stinging gleam
as my country sows desert upon Vietnam.
We, imperious, die of human thirst
— having forgotten tears are an oasis.

"help...help" From heart to heart
a heartbeat staggers, looking for a haven.
Bereft. It is easier to enter heaven
than to pass through each others' eyes,

pores,
armor,
like merciful sperm, cool water, the knife —
thrust of tears. . . It is easier
to go smoothly insane — like a Detroit car —
than to stammer and hiccup help.

And this poem is the easiest thing of all:
it floats upon children‘s singing, out of the bloodstream;
a sunbeam shoulders it, carries it away.
There is nothing left.
"yes. . . yes there is" (4-5)

POEM

Let the dead bury the dead:
it is said. But I say it is we living
who have been shoved underground, who must now rise up
to bury the dead, the Johnsons, Francos, Fords and
McNamaras. (10)

SECRETARY

McNamara the businessman sits at his desk
And stamps "PAID" on the death-lists (31)


(NOVEMBER) (LIGHT, SHORTDAYS)
(DARK FIERY SUNSETS)

A small bird hops about in branches,
a blue high toss, the sound
goes. Winter
begins to burn up all the light.

And in no time
it's evening.
The boy gazes to the west
as if all the fire-engines in the world were streaking there.... (36).

[Kristen Brida · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am in absolute awe of Knott’s strange image-making and tender honesty, and how he wields this power in such different contexts.

Knott writes of atrocities, both foreign & domestic, both bloody and subtle. In his most powerful poems, he directly addresses poets to consider our place in the midst of all this violence and considers if poetry is worth writing in the face of all these horrors. He never provides a definitive answer, but he provides an honest one.

Knott’s poetry also explores love and grief in their truest form—a grotesque and honest beauty.

Though these poems were written during the Vietnam War, these poems are especially prescient in today’s world steeped in violence & oppression.

[DW]

The book reminded me of how great short poems can be. Saint Geraud is fearless and writes his own page. He gets poems to talk to each other, mocks titles, and never resists falling in and out of sense as it pleases him. I respect that a lot. While a few of his poems stand out for me, to be honest he felt stuck under the shadows of Ginsberg and the tropes of the 60s and 70s.

His obsession with Naomi is a pretty flat premise that does not sustain the work. I couldn't care less, despite his LSD hair and blood insistence that I should. His topics and handling of them were pretty dull, though his line is good.

I'd read After the Burial 20 times and leave the rest.

[Darby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really beautiful stuff in here. Some poems come across as obtuse and probably don’t have the same striking affect as they might’ve when this was originally published, but I can tell every poem was written with a genuine, fiery passion fueled by love as well as anger at the world Knott was living in and for the marginalized and oppressed. Will be coming back to these frequently.

Some favorite lines:

“I breathe your / heartbeat, Naomi… I fill my hands / with your dark hair / and offer it to the hollows of your face”
“Hair is heaven’s water flowing eerily over us”
“I only keep this voice to give to anything afraid of me”

[Donald Armfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange, peculiar, bizarre and sometimes disturbing The Naomi Poems: Corpse and Beans is poetic suicide dressed in chimeras with the wit of a surrealist.

Highly Recommended!!

A few favorite
There Stanzas for Yvette Mimieux
To American Poets
Poem for Irene Keller
Sleep

the entire collection is a must read

[Max Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this man and his poems so much. Such a nutty writer only reason for 4 stars is some of these are just too complex above my readership. Crazy mind on this guy. “To American Poets” sticking w me lots thank u bill knott

[Daniel Crowley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most electric books I've read.

[Zach Werbalowsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of these poems are unforettable. Especially the short ones.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm on my knees

[Doniell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this first book of Knott’s. My biggest caveat involves the over use of metaphors involving menstruation. Could we have found a different one? Yes.

[Carla]

A truly original book of poetry by a truly original poet. By turns cranky, enraged and lyrical, it’s one of a kind.

[Robert Shoemaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like a good Beat poet, Knott is tired of slaughter and urges poetry onward. Like any good hipster, Knott is suspicious of poetry and its institutions. Full of jewel-like lines and musings one might keep under a pillow for dreams or nightmares.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best of Knott? Sooooo good.

[Helly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Bill Knott...brilliant poet.