Keith Waldrop

From the jungles of Rwanda to the ruined streets of Somalia to the craggy mountains of Afghanistan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist offers this intimate portrayal of war from the front lines.

A Trilogy

Transcendental Studies

An American History (Sun and Moon Classics)

Light While There Is Light

The Space of Half an Hour

One of the unheralded masterpieces of twentieth-century American fiction, Light While There Is Light is acclaimed poet Keith Waldrop's autobiographical novel about the myriad ghosts left behind by his family. Born to a deeply religious mother, the narrator and his siblings are led across the US as she searches for the "right" religious sect—a trip that ends with her speaking in tongues, and finally her total isolation. But no synopsis can do justice to the beauty of Keith Waldrop's measured, wise, and unembroidered prose, illuminating the fear, madness, and destruction within hearth and home—though never repudiating his love for same. In a tradition that stretches back through Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner to Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe, Keith Waldrop and Light While There Is Light are American treasures.

An American History

This compelling selection of recent work by internationally celebrated poet Keith Waldrop presents three related poem sequences—"Shipwreck in Haven," "Falling in Love through a Description," and "The Plummet of Vitruvius"—in a virtuosic poetic triptych. In these quasi-abstract, experimental lines, collaged words torn from their contexts take on new meanings. Waldrop, a longtime admirer of such artists as the French poet Raymond Queneau and the American painter Robert Motherwell, imposes a tonal override on purloined materials, yet the originals continue to show through. These powerful poems, at once metaphysical and personal, reconcile Waldrop's romantic tendencies with formal experimentation, uniting poetry and philosophy and revealing him as a transcendentalist for the new millennium.

Jo Lendle

Peter Bürger

Susan Kreller

Ann Cotten

Sabine Scholl

David Blum

Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger

Jessica Lind

Bettina Hesse

Sascha Macht

Sónia Gomes

José Luís Mendonça

Theresa Pleitner

Paul-Henri Campbell

Barbara Maria Kloos

Literaturmagazin

Poet Nr. 21

X. J. Kennedy

James Camp

A Book of the Best Bad Verse

Pegasus Descending

This is the first children's book from Keith N. Waldrop from one of the puppy poems in the Puppy Poems Series. The Witch Hat is a fun book about Halloween and the trouble Tanner makes in the house when he gets the Witch Hat down from the shelve. All of the little frineds in the hosue have to help get the hat back onto the shelve before Dad finds out.

The Witch Hat

Poetry. Keith Waldrop's new book continues and deepens the examination of meaning, connotation, denotation, and meaninglessness implicit in his work. Many titles by this major poet, translator, and editor continue to be available from SPD: ANALOGIES OF ESCAPE, LOCALITY PRINCIPLE, THE EIGHTH DAY, and others. Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop edit Burning Deck in Providence, Rhode Island.

Haunt (no-boundary Proposals)

The Resemblance Begins

Rosemarie Waldrop

From Dada to translation, from conversations to collage, this book chronicles the artistic antics and profoundly original minds of Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop.

Interviews, Statements, Alarms, Excursions

Keeping / the Window Open

Presents a selection of recent work by the poet, including three related poem sequences that use collaged words out of context to take on new meanings.

A fifteenth-century Dutch painter walks the streets of Providence, RI; a young girl goes to sleep in a dark room; language itself is felt to conjure Charlemagne. Are these remembered scenes or imagined constructions? Do they emerge from history, dream, or chance? Acclaimed novelist Harry Mathews remarks of this book, "Poets write the most accurate prose, and Keith Waldrop renders our visible and invisible world with uncanny, idiosyncratic fineness.

Serious Variations

Hegel's Family

Poetry. " All of Waldrop's work evokes the conflict between activity and passivity, doing and being, poetry as discovery and poetry as invention. In fact, reading Waldrop gives the reader two impressions, often in rapid succession: that of participating in a desperate search for a lost and possibly non-existent item; and that of sitting still, trying to be so quiet a tiny voice will reach one from a distance. The energy in these poems goes into the effort of thought, of meditation, not into the lines. Like Wallace Stevens in his early long poems (and like any phenomenologist) Waldrop strips perceptions of accretions so that they can be seen in their first light, without falsification. The effect is in both cases a poem that is smooth flowing on the surface but dense with effort and energy underneath" - Janet McCann, Parnassus: Poetry in Review.

Selected Poems and a Few Songs

The Opposite of Letting the Mind Wander

Jaimy Gordon

Narrates the author's family history, recalling a time when his mother led her sons across the Midwest in search of a religious sect that she could join, a journey which ends in her total isolation.

Light While There Is Light: An American History

Keith Waldrop

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