#keith waldrop

[majestativa]

You mix death with love.

— EDMOND JABÈS ⚜️ If There Were Anywhere but Desert: The Selected Poems of Edmond Jabès, transl. by Keith Waldrop, (1988)

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

Today, December 11th, we celebrate the birthday of acclaimed poet Keith Waldrop (1932-2023). Waldrop was a prominent voice in American poetry and renowned translator of French literature. He was known for writing poetry that expressed a fascination with the world and philosophical perspectives. Waldrop met his wife Rosmarie (b. 1935) while stationed in Germany during the 1950’s and the two established Burning Deck Press in 1961 after settling in Providence, RI. The press was committed to publishing experimental poetry and prose for fifty-six years and closed in 2017. 

In honor of Waldrop’s birthday, we’re sharing Letters from Rosmarie & Keith Waldrop. Published in 1970 by Burning Deck in an edition of 500 copies, Letters from Rosmarie & Keith Waldrop is a collection of concrete poetry that plays with the visual elements of typography. The couple collaborated on the book, alternating the authorship of each page to create a delightful conversation and graphic menagerie. Special Collections holds several of Keith and Rosmarie’s collaborations and over 120 Burning imprints accessible here. 

View other Milestone Monday posts.

– Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[atompowers]

Poet by Keith Waldrop | Poetry Foundation

The wind dying, I find a city deserted, except for crowds of

[extollingtheeveryday]

Keith Waldrop // "Lullaby in January" [ID in alt text]

[bibliomancyoracle]

we have lived

on a ladder to

the window of a

room to which

the key is lost

. . .

from "Diminished Galleries" by Keith Waldrop

[poem-today]

A poem by Keith Waldrop

Poet

The wind dying, I find a city deserted, except for crowds of people moving and standing.    Those standing resemble stories, like stones, coal from the death of plants, bricks in the shape of teeth.    I begin now to write down all the places I have not been— starting with the most distant.    I build houses that I will not inhabit.

Keith Waldrop

[the-final-sentence]

Malachite green, Armenian blue, red earths in abundance, vermilion like a drug.

Keith Waldrop, from “Below the Earth”

[spilledreality]

Keith Waldrop, “A Matter of Collage”:

Things seem to collect around me, wherever I go, in the same way ideas occur as if from nowhere, and since I have always balked at throwing anything out I sometimes imagine my house simply a context for unexpected items. I write under much the same compulsion: whether local images or abstract concepts, whatever interests me I hold on to as best I can and a poem is my formal grip. Everyone knows how a painter can put the most disparate things into a single picture—Jesus Christ, for instance, along with a Dutch windmill—and they are seen then in a single light.

[...]

ANTIQUARY

Some people try, before cashing in, to make their lives into shrines. Mine seems to be turning out, as predicted, a small provincial museum, the kind that might have in some corner or other one work you could be interested in, if you knew it was there.