Keeping / the window open: Interviews, Statements, Alarms, Excursions (Wave Interview Series) - Softcover

Waldrop, Keith; Waldrop, Rosemarie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1940696690 ISBN 13: 9781940696690

Publisher: Wave Books, 2019

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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 Jabès, Jacques Roubaud, Friederike Mayröcker, 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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

from "Ceci N'est Pas Keith"

 

To marry Rosmarie, I was first required to send her astrologer father exact coordinates of my birth: day, hour, latitude, longitude.

For something so momentous, and so personal, he did not trust himself to cast the horoscope, but sent the appropriate details—of my birth and of hers—to a master astrologer whom he revered.

We never learned what revelations he received.

Except the lucky conclusion. It is all right, said Herr Sebald, after consulting the documents.

We might marry.

Rosmarie's ship was a day late because of storms on the Atlantic. When she did arrive, it was with three large wooden crates. The customs officials glanced at her, at the crates, began to stamp them without ceremony.

Then I became visible.

They reconsidered, made her open everything, went over it all with a geiger counter.

That evening, we went to the City Center, where Balanchine was giving his new Stravinsky ballet Agon, along with the Brecht-Weill Seven Deadly Sins.

Allegra Kent. Lotte Lenya. For a long time after—in the wilderness of Michigan—Rosmarie would point out that she was given a misleading idea of what, in the way of culture, would be available to her in America.

We lived in the last house on a dead end street called Turner Park Court, the street named, not for a person, but from a long-disbanded Turnverein (Ann Arbor having a large German population). It was an extremely small house.

The walls of every room we lined with books, all but kitchen and bathroom—for fear of grease and steam.

Between grease and steam, steam seemed the less dangerous and, when the volumes reached too great an overflow, we decided to put shelves in the bathroom.

So what books should go there?

Books, we decided, with something in title or author to suggest that locus. We began. Ubu Roi, of course.

The Golden Pot.

Anything by Adelaide Crapsey.

The search gained momentum. The Sitwells. The Brownings. The Golden Ass. Privy Seal. Free Fall.

Let It Come Down.

Finally it was hopeless, any word at all doubling its meaning with an excremental shadow.

Howards's End.

Gone with the Wind.

 

Edition details

• Publisher: Wave Books
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1940696690
• ISBN 13: 9781940696690
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 392
• Editor: Lerner Ben