About the Author:
Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, and the author, most recently, of the art modeling memoir Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object (University of Arkansas Press, 2009), the essay collection For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs (Counterpoint, 2010), and the poetry collection ROBINSON ALONE (Gold Wake Press, 2012). She is also the author of the poetry collection ONEIROMANCE (AN EPITHALAMION) (Switchback Books, 2008) and, with Elisa Gabbert, the collaborative poetry collection That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths Books, 2008). She lives in Chicago.
From Booklist:
*Starred Review* Weldon Kees is one of the more mysterious figures in American arts. Born in Nebraska in 1914, he followed his polymorphous muse from coast to coast as a musician, librarian, writer, screenwriter, critic, and painter. He is remembered most for his poetry, and for his disappearance. Did he leap to his death from the Golden Gate Bridge in July 1955 or seek a new life in Mexico? In an extraordinary act of identification, poet and essayist Rooney (For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs, 2010) improvises on Kees’ most haunting poems, a quartet featuring an alter ego named Robinson. Her loosely biographical, knowledgeably imaginative, and gorgeously atmospheric story in verse portrays Robinson as a dapper, talented, and bedeviled man who conceals his sorrows behind insouciance. Rooney weaves lines from Kees’ writings into her bluesy, funny, and scorching lyrics as she follows Robinson from elation to desolation as his wife succumbs to alcoholism and his dreams fade. Rooney’s syncopated wordplay, supple musicality, and cinematic descriptions subtly embody Kees’ artistic pursuits as well as Robinson’s sardonic grace under pressure. An intricate, psychologically luminous homage, tale of American loneliness, and enthralling testament to poetry’s resonance. --Donna Seaman
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