Talk:Bill Knott (poet)

Untitled

Finally, Bill Knott has an encyclopedia entry in Wikipedia. He is one of the great American poets of his generation, as his poetic oeuvre is now catalogued in Special Collections at universities and, most importantly, his early- and middle-period work is currently being rediscovered and becoming influential among young American poets (in their 20s, 30s, 40s). Marlowe -- 10 July 2007

Reverts

So what's up with that? : / Evaunit♥666♥ 03:44, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Hm : / Evaunit♥666♥ 03:03, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

There has been deletion of content on this page before, for no other apparent reason than to disrupt the page, so it could be the same user. Feeeshboy (talk) 16:46, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

.... please remove the reference to "suicide" which is libelous. ——Bill Knott

please remove the reference to "suicide", which I consider libel.

68.188.167.218 (talk) 16:53, 13 January 2009 (UTC)Bill Knott

I would never try to be rude, but is it? I read it in the intro to one of your books and considered it something that should be mentioned. Evaunit♥666♥ 03:28, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how it's libelous either. Please explain. Meanwhile, can we get a source on that? Feeeshboy (talk) 14:43, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll probably add the book as a source when I get home, if that's alright. Evaunit♥666♥ 15:06, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

so what's next? my "suicide", my nervous breakdown, the year I spent in the insane asylum (as they called it back then)— how about a list of my prescription medications? A list of my sexual partners? I don't see what's relevant in any of these personal events (assuming they even occurred). If people are accessing this entry because of my career as a poet, then your entry should stick to the professional aspects of poetry . . .

Please restrict this page to professional aspects only, or I will seek legal recourse.

68.188.167.218 (talk) 15:42, 14 January 2009 (UTC)Bill Knott

If you are Bill Knott (and I'm not saying you are or you aren't), I would like to ask that you understand this from a wikipedia editor's perspective. I am in no way trying to break into your personal life and I think wikipedia goes out of its way to make sure this does not become a gossip site with its articles that focus on living people. The fact that this "suicide" is mentioned in the article is because it is notable, which is seen through the fact that it was published in a book. I hardly think that would present a cause to seek legal recourse. Evaunit♥666♥ 17:51, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

This is NOT an appropriate forum for legal threats. IP address 68.188.167.218/User:BillKnott- if you have a problem with how this page is handled that you can not resolve through this talk page, please follow THIS LINK to make your case. Both in dispute resolution and in article discussions, we (Wikipedians) handle things by reasoned discussion, not by making threats or by repeatedly deleting content without discussion.

As for your claims of libel, I don't think you have a very strong case. To qualify as libel, a statement must be both false and harmful to a person's reputation. The fact, as I understand it, that the poet's (presumably, your) own book states that the persona of Saint Geraud committed suicide is accurately represented by the article. Furthermore, I don't see how the "facts" of this frame story, as it were, are at all damaging to the poet's reputation. The only way I can imagine in which Saint Geraud's purported death would hurt the poet's reputation would be if one found this to be artistically undesirable, as the poet has said in interviews that the Saint Geraud pen name was "stupid" and "pretentious." Those may be your feelings, but those judgments are not presented by the article. If you want this information stricken, you're going to need to explain how it damages the poet's reputation in an objective way, and also how it does so in a way that the same information, published by the poet himself, does not. The public has every right to acknowledge the existence of information that has been put into the public sphere.

Finally, there is no reason to presume a snowball effect of commentary about the poet's personal life. Wikipedia has strict standards regarding the handling of biographical data that forbid any content that can not be attributed to verifiable sources. However, presuming that you are Bill Knott, you're the one revealing all of this personal information in a permanently public way. Feeeshboy (talk) 13:56, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Dealing with articles about yourself. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:54, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

• Hi IP address 68.188.167.218/User:BillKnott. Many people are throwing many confusing rules at you. In short, you just can't go around making legal threats. It escalates the situation to an entirely new level of seriousness. Your IP address may very well be blocked--prevented from editing.
• So if you have a serious concern that the material on this page is libelous, please find someone to help you. You may want to start by reading some of the links that have been provided above, as well as Wikipedia:Libel. On the latter page there is a link to a helpful email address.. Thanks Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 04:21, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Bill

Reading the preceding exchange I can say with absolute certainty that yes, that was unmistakably Bill Knott. He could be touchy. I can see his point, though, to some degree. A lot of people did tend to fixate on his life story and personality quirks rather than talking about his poetry, and I think that made him feel disrespected, despite being a very well regarded poet. He had some interesting things to say in his Memorious interview about how privilege works in the literary world, and who gets respect and who doesn't. Reading someone's work closely and carefully is a mark of respect. Look at the tomes of serious literary criticism that have been written over the years, and whose work they've been written about. And then people write about Bill and they keep bringing up the same anecdote from 1968. How about the fact that he was known in his early career for writing unusually short poems, that later in his career he became interested in traditional poetic forms, though he never restricted himself to one particular style because he didn't believe in that. How about his recurring themes. Etc. (I'll attempt to write a paragraph to that effect, not because I'm the best person to do it, but because no one else has bothered.)

I do find his life story interesting, but I won't write about it because I know he would have hated that. There's more that could be said about his poetry, though. In fact there's an ongoing blog dedicated to discussing just that (https://billknott.wordpress.com/). --Rosekelleher (talk) 12:29, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

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