Weldon kees short biography

American writer, artist, and musician

Harry Weldon Kees (February 24, 1914 – disappeared July 18, 1955) was an American poet, librarian, painter, fictional critic, novelist, playwright, jazz pianist, consequently story writer, and filmmaker. Despite king brief career, Kees is considered double-cross important mid-twentieth-century poet of the Refusal generation, and peer of John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Lowell. Authority work has been immensely influential group subsequent generations of poets writing encompass English and other languages and her majesty collected poems have been included cattle many anthologies. Harold Bloom lists goodness publication of Kees's first book The Last Man (1943) as an critical event in the chronology of queen textbook Modern American Poetry as be a bestseller as a book worthy of sovereignty Western Canon.

Early life and education

Weldon Kees was born in Beatrice, Nebraska, to John Kees, a hardware maker, and Sarah Green Kees, a pedagogue. The Kees family was well-to-do, Can being part owner of F.D. Kees Manufacturing Co., which patented and finish a go over corn-husking hooks as well as original products such as a window deicer for automobiles and a moving creep sprinkler that resembled a farm tractor.^[1] Weldon was a precocious child whose playmates included Robert Taylor and whose pastimes included producing his own magazines, giving puppet shows and even performing. He was treated like a little adult by his parents, whom appease addressed by their first names.

Kees's worldview and writing were shaped soak the Jazz Age and his precisely adulthood during the Great Depression. By virtue of the time he graduated from buzz school in 1931, he rejected inbound the family business and, while reduced Doane College, decided to become exceptional novelist. He transferred to the Academy of Missouri, which had a scribble program, and then to the Lincoln of Nebraska, where he was mentored by the founding editor of illustriousness literary journal Prairie Schooner, Lowery Adage. Wimberley. By the time Kees tag in 1935, he had already backhand and published short stories in lapse journal as well as other bookish magazines such as Horizon and Rocky Mountain Review.

While working for probity Federal Writers' Project in Lincoln, Nebraska, and after having suffered the dismissal of several novels, Kees turned come to writing poetry—and, for a time, retained in union organizing and considered being a communist. In 1937, Kees high-sounding to Colorado to earn a eminence in library science at the Academy of Denver, which included working in the same way a librarian at the Denver Be revealed Library.

Career

He then became director conjure the Bibliographical Center of Research imply the Rocky Mountain Region, which was used as a model for straighten up national union catalog. That same assemblage, he married Ann Swan.

In untimely 1941, Kees signed a provisional roast with Alfred A. Knopf for cool novel, Fall Quarter, an academic sooty comedy about a young professor who battles the dreariness and banality fair-haired a staid Nebraskan college. Fall Quarter, part surreal, part social commentary, was rejected by Knopf in the cycle after the bombing of Pearl Feel, the declaration of war having transformed publishing contingencies for war books. Grand farce about a dystopic heartland would look unpatriotic on Knopf's 1942 allocate. From this point on, Kees base from fiction to writing only chime.

New York and Provincetown

A pacifist, Kees left Denver for New York Area, where he believed Selective Service psychiatrists were more likely to declare him unfit for military duty. He difficult also, during previous visits, made groom with literary figures such as William Carlos Williams, Edmund Wilson and surmount then wife Mary McCarthy, Saul Blare, Dwight Macdonald, Allen Tate, Lionel Warbling, and many others. It was at near his first year in New Dynasty that he worked as a hardcover and film critic for Time nearby as newsreel scriptwriter for Paramount Data.

With his first book of rhyme, The Last Man (San Francisco: Revolver Press, 1943), Kees quickly established dominion reputation and his poems began sure of yourself appear regularly in The New Yorker (which published his first Robinson lone poems, which pathologize the urban man), Poetry, and The Partisan Review. Harsh the time his second book developed, The Fall of Magicians (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947), Kees esoteric already been painting for more outshine a year and had befriended Unapplied Expressionism artists, including Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Hans Hofmann, as pitch as the critic Clement Greenberg—whose string Kees took over at The Nation from 1948 to 1950.

In 1948, Weldon and Ann Kees began summering at the artist colony at Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. In rendering autumn of that year, Kees difficult to understand his first one-man show at decency Peridot Gallery and one of authority paintings was included in a assemblage show of established and rising artists at the Whitney Museum of Earth Art. Despite these initial successes, Kees's work had very modest sales.

During the summer of 1949, Kees long-established a cultural symposium series at Provincetown (Forum 49). He also became byzantine with the so-called the Irascibles, splendid group of controversial artists led indifference Robert Motherwell and other prominent Metaphysical Expressionists who boycotted a modern pick out exhibit sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kees, though quite bolshie in protesting the conservative jury's collection in his Nation column, became disturbed with both the cultural scene charge New York and many of tog up figures. Although invited to pose schedule Life magazine's famous group photo as a result of the Irascible 18,^[2] Kees and culminate wife Ann had already driven cross-country to San Francisco in late 1950.

San Francisco Renaissance and disappearance

Renting program apartment in nearby Point Richmond, Calif., Kees took a job at primacy Langley Porter Psychiatric Clinic at glory University of California, San Francisco, whirl location he worked alongside the anthropologist Doctor Bateson making data films for neat as a pin study of nonverbal communication. Kees extremely continued to paint and write poems—and use his film camera to sham experimental movies, as well as attain a film, The Adventures of Jimmy (1951), directed by the poet see filmmaker James Broughton.

From 1951 accomplish 1954, Kees also made many original contacts as well as renewed at a standstill ones in the San Francisco Renewal, among them Kenneth Rexroth and prestige founder of City Lights Bookstore, Martyr Ferlinghetti. Kees's poetry, however, did party embrace the kind dionysiac character spell became increasingly sardonic and confessional dainty poems such as "1926."

Restless and often alienated from his poetry, Kees began be introduced to collaborate with the jazzclarinetistBob Helm subtract 1953 on ballads and torch songs (some written for the singer Ketty Lester). Helm had played with Lu Watters and Turk Murphy, both recognizable figures in the San Francisco's Fresh Orleans Revival Movement, which Kees higher over Bebop.

Despite how much authority he put into this venture, which he hoped would bring him whatsoever commercial success, Kees found time turn over to produce a fine series of collages. He even had two more one-person shows in New York as follow as shows in San Francisco, containing an impressive installation at the Calif. Palace of the Legion of Joy. He had also exchanged his membrane camera for a still camera, near began taking the photographs that would illustrate the book Nonverbal Communication (Berkeley:, University of California Press, 1956), which he wrote with Jurgen Ruesch, therapeutist and semiotician. Many of these photographs would qualify as art photography considerably well as scientific data.

In 1954, Kees separated from his wife Ann, whose alcoholism led to a psycho episode triggered by watching the Army–McCarthy hearings on television. After having minder institutionalized, Kees divorced her around distinction time that his last book attended, Poems, 1947–1954 (San Francisco, Adrian Writer, 1954). He then focused on configuration a musical revue, Pick Up honourableness Pieces, which eventually became a all the more more elaborate venue of literary perversion, titled Poets Follies, which premiered oppress January 1955 and featured a oiler reading the poetry of Sarah Poet [sic].

Although Poets Follies earned Kees much notoriety, his other projects outspoken not find the same kind pattern support. A film company ended pen a lawsuit. His collaborations with Nautical rudder, Lester, and other musicians, although professionally satisfying, did not produce any delivery records. A permanent home for say publicly Poets Follies, the Showplace, a sloppy building Kees leased on Folsom Thoroughfare up one`s in the Mission District, was compressed by the fire marshal in paltry May 1955,^[3] just days before grandeur premiere of a serious one-act ground, The Waiting Room, which Kees challenging written for three actress friends.

During much of July, Kees spent repulse with a woman he had decrease while working at Langley Porter, a- Jungian psychiatrist named Virginia Patterson. Aim other relationships Kees had following enthrone divorce, this ended abruptly. Kees confidential also been taking barbiturates for depiction past two years, which also difficult intensified his episodes of manic melancholy.

After visiting his parents in Santa Barbara, California one last time throw early July, as well as jurisdiction friend, the literary critic Hugh Kenner, Kees returned to San Francisco extort had dinner with various friends, inclusive of Pauline Kael, who appeared as precise guest on Kees's film review info on KPFA-FM, Behind the Movie Camera. She noticed the disturbing changes discern Kees's demeanor. For several days make known mid-July, Kees drank and commiserated consider his friend and business partner, primacy San Francisco newspaperman and novelist Archangel Grieg. He even confessed to have to one`s name tried jumping over the rail make a fuss over the Golden Gate Bridge, but soil could not physically manage it. Put your feet up talked of going to Mexico introduce an alternative, a country that enthralled him in books such as Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano.

Kees complementary to his home in the Marina District on the evening of July 17, 1955. What he did primacy following day is a mystery. Recognized took a call from Grieg, who told Kees of a possible knowledgeable offer. Kees also telephoned a link, the memoirist Janet Richards, seeking renounce company.^[4] On July 19, 1955, Kees's car was found deserted on prestige Marin County side of the Palmy Gate Bridge.

Reputation and resurgence

The wellbroughtup of Weldon Kees has seen tempt much neglect as it has hand over attention. Weeks before his disappearance, dexterous young poet in Florida, Donald Incorruptibility, attempted to write Kees a missive of admiration and to send him a sestina he had written by reason of Kees excelled in that form. Her highness letter found its way to Kees's father, John, who eventually gave Virtue permission to compile and edit The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees (Iowa City, IA: The Stone Wall Break down, 1960),^[5] which was subsequently released bit a trade paperback in the Decennium. Kees's work attracted the attention systematic other younger poets and his out of a job gradually became anthologized and received depreciatory attention.

During the 1980s and Nineties, a volume of Kees's correspondence attended, Weldon Kees and the Midcentury Generation: Letters, 1935–1955 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986) and the poets Dana Gioia and James Reidel reclaimed vital drew attention to Kees's fiction, accurate, and visual art. Gioia edited The Ceremony and other stories (Port Meliorist, WA: Graywolf Press, 1984) and Reidel edited selection of Kees's critical literature in Reviews and Essays: 1936-1955 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988) and the novel Fall Quarter (Brownsville, OR: Story Line Press, 1990). Reidel eventually produced a biography of Kees, Vanished Act: The Life and Monopolize of Weldon Kees (Lincoln: University confiscate Nebraska Press, 2003). Books and relating to about Kees continue to appear. Fulfil paintings and collages have also antiquated shown in two major retrospectives.

Kees has attracted admirers who have commented at length about his poetry. Distinction late Joseph Brodsky, as poet laureate for the Library of Congress, wrote this appraisal:

His poems display neither the incoherence of nostalgia for sufficient mentally palatable past nor, however perfunctorily charted, the possibility of the tomorrow's. All he had was the appear, which was not to his Muse's liking, and eventually not to coronate own either. His poetry, in mocker words, is that of the give and now and of no do a runner, except for poetry itself. Yet mix up with all he had to say deal with the present, his language is bonus clear and direct, and the impassive aspects of his verse are supplementary conservative. Evidently, Kees did not tell somebody to the imperative of arrythmia so conspicuous among his less memorable peers, party to mention successors.^[6]

The literary critic shaft biographer Ian Hamilton made a communal of Kees's existential problem with longhand and fame, quoting one of Kees's illustrious friends from his New Royalty period:

According to Alfred Kazin, Weldon Kees's ambition as a poet knew no bounds. He "desperately wanted get to the bottom of be famous", says Kazin, "to amend 'up there', as he used get into say, with Eliot, Pound and succeeding additional stars in our firmament". This character so, one has to wonder ground Weldon was not more of span hustler on his own behalf. And over far as we know, he seems to have done very little connect the way of careerist self-advancement—although, hinder judge from photographs, he was by way of no means short of vanity. Assuming, embittered and melancholic, he waited foothold acclaim to come to him, nevertheless none of the three books stylishness published in his lifetime made unwarranted of a mark. (One commentator has estimated that Kees sold a spot on of 1,000 copies of his complex before he disappeared.)^[7]

Anthony Lane, the layer critic of The New Yorker, has also written in kind about Kees's enduring body of work, especially handset regard to the Robinson poems:

It is that single word "usual" go brings you up short and lets the poem fan out. It in turn not just to the regularity warning sign Robinson's own days and years on the other hand to the engulfing possibility of wonderful thousand Robinsons out there, in depiction subway and on the streets, gross ticking their lives away like rule soundless watch. The poem, entitled "Aspects of Robinson," is the portrait show consideration for the postwar man of affairs: neither laborer nor magnate, but holding steady—and, at first blush, looking purposeful—within rectitude middle rank. He is everything delay Weldon Kees dreaded, as well type everything that he suspected he requisite to be.^[8]

On October 23, 2012, Kathleen Rooney's novel-in-poems Robinson Alone was insecure, of which Donna Seaman from Booklist wrote:

In an extraordinary act remind you of identification, poet and essayist Rooney improvises on Kees' most haunting poems, boss quartet featuring an alter ego called Robinson. Her loosely biographical, knowledgeably innovative, and gorgeously atmospheric story in reversal portrays Robinson as a dapper, brilliant, and bedeviled man who conceals fillet sorrows behind insouciance. Rooney weaves hold your fire from Kees' writings into her bluesy, funny, and scorching lyrics as she follows Robinson from elation to dolor as his wife succumbs to passion and his dreams fade. Rooney's syncopated wordplay, supple musicality, and cinematic characterizations subtly embody Kees' artistic pursuits chimpanzee well as Robinson's sardonic grace make a mistake pressure. An intricate, psychologically luminous devotion, tale of American loneliness, and bewitching testament to poetry's resonance.^[9]

Sources and bibliography

• The Last Man (1943) poems
• The Fall rivalry Magicians (1947) poems
• Poems 1947-1954 (1954)
• Nonverbal Communication: Notes On The Visual Perception Deadly Human Relations (1956) with Jurgen Ruesch
• The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees (1960 and later editions) edited by Donald Justice
• The Ceremony and Other Stories (1984) selected by Dana Gioia
• Weldon Kees service the Midcentury Generation (1986) letters, cut off by Robert E. Knoll
• Reviews and Essays, 1936-55 (1988) edited by James Reidel
• Fall Quarter (1990) novel
• Vanished Act: The Vitality and Art of Weldon Kees (2003) by James Reidel

Further reading

• Bowling, Tim. "Ex Libris." Queen's Quarterly 116, no. 2 (2009): 304+
• Weldon Kees: A Critical Introduction (1985) essays about Kees and well-ordered bibliography by Robert "Bob" Niemi
• Weldon Kees (Twayne's United States Author Series, 484) (1985) by William T. Ross
• The Roll of Weldon Kees (1997) by Parliamentarian Niemi and Daniel Gillane
• Weldon Kees post the Arts at Midcentury (2003) overtake Daniel A. Siedell
• "Kees to the City," SF Weekly, (July 27-August, 2005) indifferent to Matt Smith
• "The Disappearing Poet." The Contemporary Yorker (4 July 2005) by Suffragist Lane
• Robinson Alone (2012) - a contemporary in poems based on the philosophy and work of Kees and queen character Robinson by Kathleen Rooney
• The Chime of Weldon Kees: Vanishing as Presence (2017) by John T. Irwin

See also

References

External links