About the Book
A rich array of materials coalesce here into a vibrant portrait, in text and image, of two extraordinary artists and collaborators. For nearly sixty years, the Waldrops have influenced multiple generations of writers through their own poetry and fiction, translations, teaching, and their press, Burning Deck, which published some of the most influential authors of late-twentieth-century avant-garde literature. This collection seeks to illustrate the many ways in which the Waldrops have expanded the possibilities of bookcraft, art, community, and literature.
Table of Contents:
Introduction, Aaron Kunin
Light Travels
Ceci n'est pas Keith, Ceci n'est pas Rosmarie
from The Wolgamot Interstice (1961)
from Aesthetic Uses of Obscenity, Keith Waldrop (graduate thesis, U Michigan)
from Against Language?, Rosmarie Waldrop (graduate thesis, U Michigan)
Change of Address (1968, cover photo by Walt Odets)
"Paris" from The Form of a City Changes Faster Alas Than the Human Heart (Jacques Roubaud, tr. Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop, 2006)
photo from Jabes house, Jabes drawing
from The Book of Questions (Edmond Jabès, tr. Rosmarie Waldrop, 1976)
from Lavish Absence: Recalling and Rereading Edmond Jabès
from Etat (Anne-Marie Albiach, tr. Keith Waldrop)
Claude Royet-Journoud: translation and letters
from "An Interview with Claude Royet-Journoud by Keith & Rosmarie Waldrop" (1985) Translation as Collaboration (KW)
"XXIV" and "XXV" from A Test of Solitude (Emmanuel Hocquard, tr. Rosmarie Waldrop, Serie d'Ecriture #12, 2000)
Irreducible Strangeness (2001)
"1st Weather" from Heiligenastalt (Friederike Mayrocker, tr. Rosmarie Waldrop, Dicten= #1, 1994)
from "Music Is an Oversimplification of the Situation We Are In (in memory of John Cage)" from A Dark Octave (Burning Deck, 1967)
author photo and poems from Aggressive Ways of the Casual Stranger (1972)
from When They Have Senses (1980)
photo (Paol Keineg)
Thinking of Follows (1996)
from Differences for Four Hands (1984)
Why I Write Prose Poems (1987)
from Reproduction of Profiles (1987)
photo (Mangoldt, 1995)
from Interview with Matthew Cooperman
from A Key into The Language of America (1994)
from A Form / Of Taking / It All (1990)
Alarms and Excursions (1988)
from Hanky of Pippin's Daughter (1986)
from Interview with Joan Retallack
Cut With the Kitchen Knife (2016)
Rosmarie Waldrop, Interview with Ben Lerner (2017)
poster from Wastepaper Theater
The Resemblance Begins, play by Keith Waldrop (1976/1994)
from Tank Line (1966)
"Connecticut Elegy" (Burning Deck,1969)
DO NOT DISTURB (song) from Songs from the Decline of the West (1970)
from My Nodebook in December (1971)
"To Rosmarie in Bad Kissingen" from the New Yorker (October 30, 1971)
"Concept of Through" (from The Garden of Effort, 1976, written 1971)
from The Quest for Mount Misery
"Statement on Collage" (from A Grammar of Collage, edited by François Hugot, 1993) Collage(s) by Keith Waldrop (unpublished)
from Shipwreck in Haven/Transcendental Studies
Peter Gizzi and Keith Waldrop, REAL SHADOWS: INTERVIEW (1993–1997)
stills from The Logical Structure of the World (film by Keith Waldrop)
from Light While There Is Light
Photo of Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop at printer [year, photographer]
selections from Burning Deck magazine, issues one through four (1962–1965)
Introduction to A Century in Two Decades: A Burning Deck Anthology, 1961–1981 Introduction to Burning Deck: One Score More (2002)
"W" from Flat with No Key
****
Rosmarie Waldrop bibliography
Keith Waldrop bibliography
Acknowledgments
About the Author :
Rosmarie Waldrop is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and essays, including Gap Gardening: Selected Poems and the trilogy Curves to the Apple. She has translated many works by writers such as Edmond Jabes, Jacques Roubaud, Friederike Mayrcker, Elke Erb, and others. She has taught at universities such as Wesleyan, Tufts, and Brown, and she is the recipient of many awards and fellowships from institutions such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fund for Poetry. In 2006 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Keith Waldrop is the author of many books, including Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy, which won a 2009 National Book Award in Poetry. He has also translated many works by writers such as Claude Royet-Journoud, Anne-Marie Albiach, and Charles Baudelaire. He taught at Brown University from 1968 until his retirement and is the recipient of many awards and fellowships from institutions such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fund for Poetry. Together, Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop are the founders and editors of Burning Deck Press, which operated for fifty-six years, from 1961 to 2017. Ben Lerner is the author of three books of poetry (The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw, and Mean Free Path), two novels (Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04) and a work of criticism (The Hatred of Poetry). The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner is a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College.
Review :
"One of the leading voices in contemporary American poetry. Waldrop's nimble poetics of 'gap gardening' provides the emotional and ethical center."--Boston Review
"A wonderful mix of philosophical conversation, erotic questions and astrophysical speculation--defiantly brilliant speculations."--Publishers Weekly
"With this collection, it is evident that Waldrop's universe begins where Einstein's ends. Nearly fifty years of lyric riffs, meditations, and collages, using as source material the works of physicists, philosophers, explorers, historians, and critics, from Columbus to Wittgenstein, seek to simultaneously define, deconstruct, and, finally, re-construct a mind in motion."--Music & Literature
"These poems demand a certain reverence."--Bookforum
