Keith Waldrop


Bernard Keith Waldrop was an American poet, translator, publisher, and academic. He won the National Book Award for Poetry for his 2009 collection Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy.

Early life and education

Bernard Keith Waldrop was born in Emporia, Kansas, to Arthur Waldrop, a railroad worker, and Opal, a piano teacher. He received his bachelor's degree from the Kansas State Teachers College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Michigan.
From 1953 to 1955, he served in the United States Army. He was stationed in West Germany, where he met Rosmarie Sebald. She emigrated to the United States and they were married in 1959.

Academic career

From 1963 to 1964, while finishing his Ph.D., Waldrop worked as an instructor at Wayne State University, following which he was hired as a visiting assistant professor at Wesleyan University, where he taught between 1966 and 1967. He was hired as a professor of English by Brown University in 1968, where he taught for the remainder of his career for both the English and Literary Arts departments. After forty-three years of teaching he retired in 2011.

Burning Deck Press

In 1961, Waldrop and his wife, Rosmarie Waldrop, founded Burning Deck, a small press specializing in the publication of experimental poetry and prose. The press was named after a line from the poem "Casabianca," by nineteenth-century poet Felicia Hemans. The poem starts:

Death

Keith Waldrop died in Providence, Rhode Island, on July 27, 2023, at the age of 90.

Awards and honors

Dissertation

  • Aesthetic Uses of Obscenity in Literature.

    Writings

  • The Antichrist and Other Foundlings, Burning Deck, 1970.
  • Songs from the Decline of the West, Perishable Press, 1970.
  • Since Volume One, Burning Deck, 1975.
  • Three Tenors, One Vehicle: A Book of Songs, Open Places, 1975.
  • Wind Scales, Treacle Press, 1976.
  • A Century in Two Decades: A Burning Deck Anthology, Burning Deck, 1982.
  • The Quest for Mount Misery and Other Studies, Turkey Press, 1983.
  • Hegel's Family: Serious Variations, Station Hill Press, 1989.
  • Light While There Is Light: An American History, Sun & Moon Press, 1993. Reissued by Dalkey Archive Press, 2013.
  • Locality Principle, Avec Books, 1995.
  • The Silhouette of the Bridge: Memory Stand-Ins, Avec Books, 1997.
  • Analogies of Escape, Burning Deck, 1997.
  • Well Well Reality, Post-Apollo Press, 1997.
  • Clark Coolidge, Bomb, Granary Books, 2000.
  • Semiramis If I Remember: Self Portraits as Mask, Avec Books, 2001.
  • Ceci n'est pas Keith; and, Ceci n'est pas Rosmarie: Autobiographies, Burning Deck, 2002.
  • One Score More: The Second 20 Years of Burning Deck, 1982-2002, Burning Deck, 2002.
  • Pegasus Descending: A Book of the Best Bad Verse, Burning Deck, 2003.
  • Flat with No Key, Burning Deck, 2008.
  • Several Gravities, edited by Robert Seydel, Siglio, 2009.

    Poetry

  • A Windmill Near Calvary, University of Michigan Press, 1968.
  • Poem from Memory, Treacle Press, 1975.
  • The Garden of Effort, Burning Deck, 1975.
  • Windfall Losses, Pourboire Press, 1977.
  • The Space of Half an Hour, Burning Deck, 1983.
  • The Ruins of Providence, Copper Beech, 1983.
  • A Ceremony Somewhere Else, Awede, 1984.
  • The Opposite of Letting the Mind Wander: Selected Poems and a Few Songs, Lost Roads, 1990.
  • Haunt: No Boundaries Proposal, Instance Press, 2000.
  • The Real Subject: Queries and Conjectures of Jacob Delafon: With Sample Poems, Omnidawn, 2004.
  • Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy, University of California Press, 2009.
  • Selected Poems, Omnidawn, 2016.

    Translations

  • Claude Royet-Journoud, Reversal, Hellcoal, 1973.
  • Claude Royet-Journoud, The Notion of Obstacle, Awede, 1985.
  • If There Were Anywhere But Desert: The Selected Poems of Edmond Jabes, Station Hill Press, 1988.
  • Claude Royet-Journoud, A Descriptive Method, Post-Apollo Press, 1995.
  • Dominique Fourcade, Click-Rose, Sun & Moon Press, 1996.
  • Pascal Quignard, Sarx, 1997.
  • Anne Marie Albiach, A Geometry, Burning Deck, 1998.
  • Xue Di, Heart Into Soil, Burning Deck, 1998.
  • Xue Di, An Ordinary Day, Alice James Books, 2002.
  • Esther Tellermann, Mental Ground, Burning Deck 2002.
  • Marie Borel, Close Quote, Burning Deck, 2003.
  • Xue Di, Another Kind of Tenderness, with Forrest Gander, Litmus 2004.
  • Jacques Roubaud, The Form of a City Changes Faster, Alas, than the Human Heart, Dalkey Archive Press, 2006.
  • Claude Royet-Journoud, Theory of Prepositions, Fence, 2006
  • Jean Grosjean, An Earth of Time, Burning Deck, 2006.
  • Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, Wesleyan University Press, 2006.
  • Anne-Marie Albiach, Figured Image, Post-Apollo Press, 2006.
  • Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen: Little Poems in Prose, Wesleyan University Press, 2009.