Random
Open Letter to Bill Knott
"Cover 6--03/15/11," media unknown, Bill Knott
Dear Bill Knott,
I love the free PDF books of your poetry. I have greedily downloaded them, even though I also have copies of your more traditionally published books. I’m writing to let you know that it would be really easy to make these already free books available for wider free dissemination on ebook readers including the Kindle, Nook, and SonyReader. Although there are sophisticated softwares that would make possible extravagant multi-platform releases, the easiest thing to do would be to make the poems available as .txt files in addition to the PDF’s you already share so freely. I ask because I would like to carry your poems with me everywhere I go. Probably I am not the only person who has this desire, but probably other people are too intimidated to ask, for fear that the request will be met with an entertainingly self-deprecating response on your blog. So I also ask on behalf of the others.
Your small but rabid readership awaits your next gesture of charity. Also, if you choose to make these files available, I will link them prominently here on HTMLGiant, and you will have an instant readership of 100-1000 new readers (estimated), many of whom will be encountering your poetry for the first time. Happily, would be my guess. Also, given the reprobate nature of our readership, many of those readers would likely send copies of the poems to friends without sending you a cent. I would imagine that this imposition of piracy and victimhood might also appeal to you. If you chose to receive it as a gift, I would request a reciprocal gift of more visual art, some of which I would promise to display prominently on the site in celebration of your work and in lament of your frequent dismissal of it, which may be sincere, but which is anyway wrongheaded, since you are one of the most important poets of my reading life.
Sincerely,
Kyle Minor
Reader
Toledo, Ohio
Nice! Knott’s been one of my favorite poets for a long, long time…
“If bombing children is preserving peace, then
my fucking you is a war-crime.”
–from Nuremberg, U.S.A.
And just so much else…
Dear Kyle Minor,
thanks for your kind words, I feel blessed by them— of course i would be happy to make my books available for free to e-readers, but is doing that really as simple as posting the books in “.txt” . . . ? because the articles i’ve read online about putting out poetry in ebook formats makes it seem like a daunting laborious difficult process, which has intimidated me from pursuing the option . . . if .txt is all it took, i’d do it immediately!
I’d also be happy to mail you personally some of my visual art for free, which i’ve offered to mail out free to anyone many times on my artblog/facebook without any takers— if i post an offer to give my original hand-made art (one-of-a-kind staplebooks with signed original handpainted art covers) away free and nobody responds, i conclude nobody wants the damn things ergo syllogy my art sucks if i can’t give it away free! . anyway
regards (email me your postal address and i’ll mail you some of my visual art)
This is one of the really amazing things about the Kindle and some of the other more sophisticated e-readers. I can send it a plain text file, and it will automatically render it such that it looks like the pages of the other ebooks on the reading device. There are more sophisticated ways to make the ebook-specific files, too, which enable the embedding of images, dynamic tables of content, etc., but the text file would get the job done, for starters.
As for the visual art, I was just asking for more jpegs, but I will email you about the actual physical objects, too (but I’d insist on paying for one of those.)
This is one of the really amazing things about the Kindle and some of the other more sophisticated e-readers. I can send it a plain text file, and it will automatically render it such that it looks like the pages of the other ebooks on the reading device. There are more sophisticated ways to make the ebook-specific files, too, which enable the embedding of images, dynamic tables of content, etc., but the text file would get the job done, for starters.
As for the visual art, I was just asking for more jpegs, but I will email you about the actual physical objects, too (but I’d insist on paying for one of those.)
dude. cool. his art is rad, what is he talking about?
Then ask for his art and get his art (it is free) and spread his art. We can each individually raise the value of his art. Do so. I mean this very HTML site could do something with Bill Knott right now, well more important than clever or dagger comments.
I think that’s what we’re going to have to do. Okay, Bill: You’ve got a blank check here, and a site with thousands of daily readers. Whatever online project big or small (and new or making use of old work) you want to do, we will make it happen right away and trumpet it loudly.
thanks again— as i have several times in the past i would beg/ask anyone to email me their postal address and i will send them free a one-of-a-kind staplebook with signed original art handpainted covers . . .
Bill: I was a student of yours back at Emerson in the early 2000s, and though I never had a workshop with you, I appreciated your modern poetry class so much. Just wanted to publicly thank you, since we’re all gushing over here.
http://xrl.us/binjpt