Really Bad Movies:

"...but I wonder what's next from FSG, should they go ahead and publish Knott, who is next? Knott proudly wears the cloak of an underground misfit, but he has been well-published these past thirty-odd years, the most recent is Laugh at the End of the World (Collected Comic Poems 1969-1999) BOA Editions, 2000. the book is a brilliant collection of caustic poems from a writer who does not neatly fit into any categories."

I would have thought Bill Knott fit fairly neatly in the 1970s zany surrealism school. He was popular about the same era as Russell Edson. I just saw some poems of Knott's in Poetry. Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't see him as some "underground misfit." He might try to wear that cloak, but it's a very mainstream, conventionally Romantic idea of being a poet. I don't know much about why Knott seemed to disappear and then re-emerge much later. Or maybe he never really went away, but was just not on my radar screen. He may be eccentric personally (or not!) but his poetry is fairly tame.

The "does not fit into any category" trope is always used for writers who fit very neatly into categories. Why is that?