Bill Knott was originally known as Saint Giraud, and first received recognition with The Naomi Poems, which were published in 1968. Among his many books of poetry are 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 (Boa Editions, Ltd., 2000), from which the poems included in this issue were taken. Knott is an assistant professor of English at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts.