Keith Waldrop

Keith Waldrop studied at University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and Brown University. The recorded working language is English. Employment is recorded with Brown University. Distinctions recorded are National Book Award and National Book Award for Poetry.

• Birth Name — Bernard Keith Waldrop • Born — 11 December 1932 • Birthplace — Emporia, Kansas, U.S. • Died — 27 July 2023 • Place of death — Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. • Occupation — Poet, professor, translator • Alma Mater — University of Michigan • Awards — Chevalier des arts et des lettres, National Book Award for Poetry, Best Translated Book Award biography

Bernard Keith Waldrop was born in Emporia, Kansas, to Arthur Waldrop, a railroad worker, and Opal (née Mohler), a piano teacher. He received his bachelor's degree from the Kansas State Teachers College (now Emporia State University) and his M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Michigan (1958, 1964). From 1953 to 1955, he served in the United States Army. He was stationed in West Germany, where he met Rosmarie Sebald. She emigrated to the United States and they were married in 1959.

From 1963 to 1964, while finishing his Ph.D., Waldrop worked as an instructor at Wayne State University, following which he was hired as a visiting assistant professor at Wesleyan University, where he taught between 1966 and 1967. He was hired as a professor of English by Brown University in 1968, where he taught for the remainder of his career for both the English and Literary Arts departments. After forty-three years of teaching he retired in 2011.

In 1961, Waldrop and his wife, Rosmarie Waldrop, founded Burning Deck, a small press specializing in the publication of experimental poetry and prose. The press was named after a line from the poem "Casabianca," by nineteenth-century poet Felicia Hemans. The poem starts: • The boy stood on the burning deck • Whence all but he had fled; • The flame that lit the battle's wreck • Shone round him o'er the dead.

Keith Waldrop died in Providence, Rhode Island, on July 27, 2023, at the age of 90.

• Aesthetic Uses of Obscenity in Literature (University of Michigan, 1964).

• A Windmill Near Calvary, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1968. • Poem from Memory, Treacle Press (Providence RI), 1975. • The Garden of Effort, Burning Deck (Providence, RI), 1975. • Windfall Losses, Pourboire Press, 1977. • The Space of Half an Hour, Burning Deck (Providence, RI), 1983. • The Ruins of Providence (poems and a story), Copper Beech (Providence, RI), 1983. • A Ceremony Somewhere Else, Awede, 1984. • The Opposite of Letting the Mind Wander: Selected Poems and a Few Songs, Lost Roads, 1990. • Haunt: No Boundaries Proposal, Instance Press, 2000. • The Real Subject: Queries and Conjectures of Jacob Delafon: With Sample Poems, Omnidawn (Richmond, CA), 2004. • Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2009. • Selected Poems, Omnidawn, 2016.

• Claude Royet-Journoud, Reversal, Hellcoal, 1973. • Claude Royet-Journoud, The Notion of Obstacle, Awede, 1985. • If There Were Anywhere But Desert: The Selected Poems of Edmond Jabes, Station Hill Press (Barrytown, NY), 1988. • Claude Royet-Journoud, A Descriptive Method, Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 1995. • Dominique Fourcade, Click-Rose, Sun & Moon Press (Los Angeles, CA), 1996. • Pascal Quignard, Sarx, 1997. • (With Rosmarie Waldrop) Anne Marie Albiach, A Geometry, Burning Deck (Providence, RI), 1998. • Xue Di, Heart Into Soil, Burning Deck (Providence, RI), 1998. • Xue Di, An Ordinary Day, Alice James Books (Farmington, ME), 2002. • Esther Tellermann, Mental Ground, Burning Deck (Providence, RI) 2002. • Marie Bore l, Close Quote, Burning Deck (Providence, RI), 2003. • Xue Di, Another Kind of Tenderness, with Forrest Gander, Litmus (New York, NY) 2004. • (With Rosmarie Waldrop) Jacques Roubaud, The Form of a City Changes Faster, Alas, than the Human Heart, Dalkey Archive Press (Normal, IL), 2006. • Claude Royet-Journoud, Theory of Prepositions, Fence, 2006 • Jean Grosjean, An Earth of Time, Burning Deck (Providence, RI), 2006. • Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2006. • Anne-Marie Albiach, Figured Image, Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 2006. • Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen: Little Poems in Prose, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2009.