Collected Poems

During Weldon Kees’s life, his poems appeared in all the most prestigious magazines of the day—Poetry (Chicago), the New Yorker, Kenyon Review, Partisan Review, and the Nation.

"Not many poets can do better than this; not many ever have. . . . This is poetry to read over and over again."—The Village Voice.

"[The] narrator-hero . . . is Robinson Crusoe, utterly alone on Madison Avenue, a stranger and afraid in the world of high-paying news weeklies, fashionable galleries, jazz concerts, highbrow movies, sophisticated reviews—the world in which Weldon Kees was eminently successful. When he said, in these gripping poems, that it filled him with absolute horror, he meant it. On July 18, 1955, his car was found on the approach to Golden Gate Bridge. He has never been seen since."—New York Times Book Review.

The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees showcases the dark brilliance and absorbing vision of one of America’s most fascinating artistic and literary figures, Weldon Kees (1914–55).