Weldon Kees

[Nightwalk]

Aspects of Robinson

Robinson at cards at the Algonquin; a thin
Blue light comes down once more outside the blinds.
Gray men in overcoats are ghosts blown past the door.
The taxis streak the avenues with yellow, orange and red.
This is Grand Central, Mr. Robinson.

.....

Relating to Robinson

....

Under a sign for Natural Bloom Cigars,
While lights clicked softly in the dusk from red to green,
He stopped and gazed into a window
Where a plaster Venus, modeling a truss,
Looked out at Eastbound traffic. (But Robinson,
I knew, was out of town: he summers at a place in Maine,
Sometimes on Fire Island, sometimes the Cape,
Leaves town in June and comes back after Labor Day.)
And yet, I almost called out, "Robinson!"

.............


Has anyone else come across this fascinating artist. I first read his work in Writing New York: A Literary Anthology and have been gripped by his Robinson poems, their haunting cadences depicting evocatively the emptiness of modern man in the realities of urban life.

mockingbird.creighton.edu/Ncw/kees.htm

[mono]

I had previously heard of Weldon Kees, yet have never read any of his poetry. Thank you for sharing it, and I will definitely browse around more of his poetry next time I visit the bookstore or library.
He has a very narrative style to his poetry, much like what others may call prose-poetry, and he also never strays from a fairly casual style in language and expression - very beautiful. :nod:
Thanks again!

[Nightwalk]

Hello mono, I'm glad you liked his work.

[lanaia74]

:thumbs_up ;) I loved this!

[Nightwalk]

Hello lanaia74, it's nice to see that you like it. Kees is one of the most interesting artists from America's fertile artistic scene during the mid-20th Century.

[amory]

It's strange that Weldon Kees is much better known and appreciated in Europe than he is in North America, but that's true of jazz, too -- one of Kees's greatest interests. I'd like to share my favorite limerick, one written by Kees in a letter to his friend, the poet Conrad Aiken:
There was a French writer named Sartre
Who got off to a pretty good startre
But as year followed year
It got painfully clear
He was longer on words than on artre.

[quasimodo1]

Weldon Kees is very familiar to me and it is true he's underappreciated here. The limerick mentioned by Amory is new to me; what a fantastic little piece of poetry and satire. You can learn much about Kees from his letters which you can access here:http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/kees/letters.htm quasimodo1