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As someone who was also lucky enough to have suffered from “The Waldrop Effect” while sitting in the living room of 71 Elmgrove Ave., I am especially grateful for Moxley’s loving and intimate account of Keith Waldrop and his poetry. Moxley’s essays have given me a way to keep a little bit of Keith’s magic with me. If you have never heard of Keith Waldrop, though, this book is a great introduction to his life and work. It is also a necessary document of how vibrant American poetry was before its recent and perverse professionalization.
—Magdalena Zurawski
Here is a work of deep appreciation and love for Keith Waldrop, a friend of the author for many decades, and a man of erudition and kindness, who shared with us a life well lived in poetry, art, music, religion, esoteric thought—and, above all, conversation. Jennifer Moxley has written a book in which the man and poet shines for us once more on Elmgrove Avenue.
—Mark McMorris
Keith Waldrop’s writing and collage work often has a lightness of touch: an ability to get something unique and significant across while seeming to focus on the transitory. It never gives the impression of trying too hard or insisting. Jennifer Moxley’s memoir captures this same quality, giving a sense of Keith through a series of small moments and impressions and somehow making him come vividly off the page. A lovely, resonant book about a truly unique (and wonderful) human being.
—Brian Evenson
To all who knew Keith Waldrop, this book will give him back to you, and to those who didn’t, it will give him to you for the first time—fully and faithfully. With her brilliant flair for anecdote and radiant detail, Moxley captures a living sense of one of America’s greatest 20th/21st century poets. And while we will always have his work, we would not have his incredible person still virtually among us if it weren’t for this marvelous text. In a particularly telling passage of her opening poem to him, she manages to rhyme his incredible ability to listen with the fact that “He looks suspiciously like Ruskin”—that says it all. And in the ensuing text, she finds a few hundred other “says it all” images and incidents, all of which will have you laughing out loud. Her humor throughout is as wry, winking, ironic, and affectionate as Keith’s always was; clearly, the gift of this complex, brainy kind of humor was one of the many things they had in common. While the inspiration is pure Keith, the sparkle, the wit, and the solid genius of the work is pure Moxley.
—Cole Swensen
Jennifer Moxley is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Midnight Work, Druthers, and The Open Secret. She has also published two books of literary essays and a memoir. She received her M.F.A. from Brown University in 1994 and teaches now at the University of Maine.
Book Information:
· Paperback: 82 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-521-2
$18
