Keith Waldrop (USA) 1932-2023

Keith Waldrop (USA)

1932-2023

 

Born in Emporia, Kansas on December 11, 1932, Keith Waldrop entered the Kansas State Teachers College as a pre-med student, studies were interrupted by his being drafted in 1953. Ultimately, he received his B.A. from Kansas State Teachers College in 1955, his M.A. in 1958, and a Ph.D., in comparative literature from the University of Michigan in 1964. Waldrop has taught at Wayne State University, Wesleyan University, and from 1968-2001, at Brown University, where he is now Brooke Russell Astor Professor, emeritus of the Humanities.

 

      With his wife, Rosmarie Waldrop, Keith founded Burning Deck press, which began publishing a wide range of contemporary American and European writers. His first chapbook of poetry, Keith Tank Line, appeared in 1966, followed by numerous books of poetry, chapbooks, collaborations, and books of translation. Among his dozens of poetry books are The Windmill Near Calvary (1968), The Garden of Effort (1975), Windfall Losses (1977), The Space of Half an Hour (1983), A Ceremony of Somewhere Else (1984), Hegel’s Family: serious variations (1989), Shipwreck in Haven: transcendental studies (1991), The Silhouette of the Bridge (1997), The House Seen from Nowhere (2002), and Songs from the Decline of the West (2003). In 2009 Waldrop received the National Book Award in Poetry for Transcendental Studies (University of California Press).

     Often using collage techniques in his writing, Waldrop notes:

                 Collage is for me a way to explore, not necessarily the
                 thing I am tearing up, but the thing I am contriving to
                 build out of torn pieces.To the extent that there is a
                 purpose to what I do, its end is the “enjoyment of a
                 composition”—a concern, as Whitehead notes,common
                 to aesthetics and logic.

     Among the many poets he has translated into English are Claude Royet-Journoud, Edmond Jabès, Anne-Marie Albiach, André Breton, Xue Di, Pierre Reverdy, Jean Grosjean, and Charles Baudelaire.

     Waldrop has received two NEA translation fellowship, stipends from the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, a DAAD Berlin Artists Program fellowship, the Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts, and a grant from the Fund for Poetry. The French government awarded him a “Chevalier des arts et des lettres.”

     Waldrop also has published a biographical fiction, Light While There Is Light: An American History (Sun & Moon Press, 1993).

BOOKS OF POETRY

Keith Tank Line (Durham, Connecticut: Burning Deck, 1966); A Windmill Near Calvary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968); Change of Address (with Rosmarie Waldrop) (Providence, Rhode Island: Burning Deck, 1968); To the Sincere Reader (art by Nelson Howe) (New York: George Wittenborn & Company, 1969); The Garden of Effort (Providence: Burning Deck, 1970); My Antichrist and Other Foundlings (Providence: Burning Deck, 1970); Letters (with Rosmarie Waldrop) (Providence: Burning Deck 1970); A Notebook for December (Providence: Burning Deck, 1971); Alice ffoster-Fallis (an outline) (with Rosmarie Waldrop, 1972); Indifference Point (Providence: Limestone Press, 1973); Words Worth Less (with Rosmarie Waldrop) (Providence: Burning Deck, 1973); Until Volume One (with Rosmarie Waldrop) (Providence: Burning Deck, 1973); Human Nature Can Be Changed (Providence: Diana’s Bi-Monthly, 1975); Poem from Memory (art by Linda Lutes) (Providence: Treacle Press, 1975); Three Logical Poems (Providence: Turkey Press, 1975); Since Volume One (with Rosmarie Waldrop) (Providence: 1975); Either Late or Sensitive (Malakoff: Orange Export, 1975); Three Tenors, One Vehicle (with James Camp and X. J. Kennedy) (Columbia, Missouri: Open Places, 1975); Windfall Losses (Woods Hole, Massachusetts: Pourboire Press, 1977); Intervals (Windsor, Vermont: Awede, 1981); The Quest for Mt. Misery and Other Studies (Isla Vista, California: Turkey Press, 1983); The Ruins of Providence (Providence: Copper Beech, 1983); A Ceremony Somewhere Else (Windsor, Vermont: Awede, 1984); Water Marks (Toronto: Underwhich Editions, 1987); Hegel’s Family: Serious Variations (Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Press, 1989); The Opposite of Letting the Mind Wander: Selected Poems and a Few Songs (Providence: Lost Roads Press, 1990); The Balustrade (Buffalo: Leave Press, 1991); Shipwreck in Haven: Transcendental Studies (Windsor, Vermont: Awede, 1991); Light Travels (with Rosmarie Waldrop) (Providence: Burning Deck, 1992); Potential Random (Providence: Paradigm Press, 1992, reprinted 1998); The Locality Principle (Penngrove, California: Avec Books, 1995); The Silhouette of the Bridge (Penngrove, California: Avec Books, 1997); Analogies of Escape (Providence: Burning Deck, 1997); The Resemblance Begins (Saratoga, California: Instress, 1997); Stone Angels (Saratoga, California: Instress, 1997); Well Well Reality (Sausalito, California: Post-Apollo Press, 1998); Spit-Curls (Sausalito, California: Duration Press, 1999); Two-Part Invention (New York: Poetry New York, 1999); The Eighth Day (Saratoga, California: Instress, 1999); Faint Optimism (Bray County Wicklow, Ireland: Wild Honey Press, 1999); Haunt (Saratoga, California: 2000); Semiramis If I Remember (Penngrove, California: Avec Books, 2001); The House Seen from Nowhere (Brooklyn: Litmus Press, 2002); Songs from the Declilne of the West (Center Book in No, issue 1, 2003); The Real Subject: Queries and Conjectures of Jacob Delafon, with Sample Poems (Richmond, California: Omnidawn, 2004); Six Poems from Always in Arises (Ellsworth, Maine: Backwoods Broadsides Chaplets Series 93, 2005); Flat with No Key (with Rosmarie Waldrop) (Providence: Burning Deck, 2008); Transcendental Studies (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2009); Several Gravities: Collages and Poems (Los Angeles: Siglio Press, 2009); Other Than Is (San Francisco: Sardines Press, 2011)

SPACE - TIME  DESCRIPTIONS

               “they knew that they were naked”

between tones (de-

caying) there is

space, and yet

 

as it were, a

new

song

 

bodies enter a

blow-pipe flame

 

body

in

motion

 

bridge of light (star-

shower, swing

of the earth)

 

circle

described about a

focus

 

hearth

consider a body

                                                 disturbed in this

motion, consider

the fact of

 

travel

consider

 

the rest of the earth

 

crescendo

 

declaration stone

by stone, tree by

unfamiliar tree

 

dimension become

dream

 

distinct dark

markings:  round

head, faint tail

 

extreme

                                                 chill (individual

movements)

 

the flash, the

report

 

treacherous

marshes, threatening

scenery

 

ill-seen when most

observed

 

I go to the

masquerade as Is

 

impetuous

rivers and deeps engulfing

in the long perspective of

sky

 

light

 

lingering, left

when body

eludes, mirrors

 

taller, windows broader

stations

along the path

nestled

 

nobody

 

never quiet

 

 

 

 UNDERLINE

 

after some

while, to

persuade himself

as the snows

pile

all things, he

thinks

think, by some

mortal link

 

fine particles, bright

sound in

air, loud surface

of sea, still

groans from the

ground

 

all this he hears

and it endears

to him the silence of the spheres

 

raises his

fist, lets

go, wrist

over face

 

light bent just

so, into figures of

common sight

 

white cloud and

thunder, under

rowdy skies, day

swallowed up

 

dusk

 

dark

 

sun-

rise (all these he sees

no farther up than the leaves

of trees)

immediate

questions, failures

successes

doubts and opinions

clashes, caresses, dr

bones, dry

bones talking on

telephones

 

moats

filled with

rubbish and roly-

polies, Jesus Christ beside

Pompey in the Holy-

of-Holies

 

no Lord in this

devil of a

rain, hailstones hacking

valleys out of plain

 

a thousand years, sadder

and sadder, where

appetite

mounts a

ladder

of

rock

river, sky

air

well enough

placed

 

edges inter-

faced, the old trite

story:

memento mori

 

straining to

follow dis-

appearing light

his eyes ablaze with

night

For a selection of other of his poems, go here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/keith-waldrop