Bill Knott

Whatever it was I liked in the poems of Bill Knott when I first read them is what I like about them still: that I can read one of his poems, very often the shorter Knott poem the better, and feel so filled up with poetry that I don't have to read any more of them.

Pebbles 

I never try to do what those in the other arts do,

composers, painters, and them,

I only try to do what other poets do,

except when other poets try to do

what those in the other arts do,

in which case I don't.

From "I Am Flying Into Myself: Bill Knott, Selected Poems, 1960-2014" (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2017).