Keith Waldrop (USA)
1932
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.
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 thismotion, 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 (individualmovements)
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