Jennifer L. Knox Biography

Jennifer L. Knox (*1968) is an American poet.
Born in Lancaster, California, she received her BA from the University of Iowa, and her MFA in poetry writing from New York University. She has taught poetry writing at Hunter College and New York University.
Her poetry has appeared in the following anthologies: The Best American Poetry (2011, 2006, 2003 and 1997); The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present; Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to Present and Free Radicals: American Poets before Their First Books.
Her first book of poems, A Gringo Like Me, was published in 2005 by Soft Skull Press. A second edition was in printed in 2007 by Bloof Books. Her second book of poems, Drunk by Noon, was published in 2007 by Bloof Books. Her third book of poems, The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway, also published by Bloof Books in 2010.
Jennifer L. Knox grew up in the Mojave Desert. Her father was an accountant and mother, a speech therapist. Her father was from Nova Scotia, and being from Nova Scotia she explains he had a very satirical sense of humor, Nova Scotians share the British love of understated, self-deprecating satire. In junior high she played the clarinet and was voted Class Clown.
The poetry of Jennifer L. Knox is very bold and real. Her poems are filled with humor, pop culture, and quite frequently, profanity. She delves into the pop culture of modern America today without censorship. Even with this saucy and savvy writing style, Knox makes use of strong diction, hyperboles, and metaphors.
Her poems are an almost indescribable mix of crazed humor and sympathetic imagination, always provocative and even moving.What's striking about Knox's work is that she seems willing to say almost anything, which sounds like it could be self-indulgent but which in her hands turns into a powerful, idiosyncratic account of American culture. She has described her reader as "a man, dressed like a woman, is over 40 but wider than a mile, 9 feet tall, all that, is a Camaro owner ... happily answers all telephone surveys" Her work appeals to a variety of audiences.
"In workshops, my poems were often described as “sarcastic” and “ironic”—but neither label ever made sense to me. I’m not being sarcastic, and irony is, like, The Gift of the Magi, right?" She has since been described to employ Menippean satire.
Knox has been compared to comedian Sarah Silverman, artist Jeff Koons, a 10-year-old who can’t keep her mouth shut, and cartoonist Robert Crumb. None of these equations is quite right, however. Jennifer L. Knox’s work is unmistakably her own: darkly hilarious, surprisingly empathetic, utterly original.
Jennifer L. Knox is the only thing standing between the average reader of poetry in America today and a full-scale unraveling of every principle held dear by generations of sorry excuses for subjects-of-the-enunciation not worth the poorly landscaped space they take up with their pathetic, fetid meat-selves. And that, depending on which end of the speculum is violating your mirror phase, is very nearly a good thing.