Weldon Kees

Weldon Kees (1914-1955). Courtesy Humor in America.

Harry Weldon Kees (February 24, 1914 - July 18, 1955) was an American poet, painter, literary critic, novelist, and short story writer.

Life

Kees was born in Beatrice, Nebraska. He was educated at Doane College, the University of Missouri and the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1935.

Kees wrote for the Federal Writers' Project in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1937 he moved to Denver, Coloradoand a job as librarian. In October 1937m at the age of 24, he married Ann Swan.

He was in New York from 1943 to 1950, heavily involved in literary journalsim. His debut collection of poetry, The Last Man, appeared in 1943. In New York City he began attending parties with literary critics like Edmund Wilson and Lionel Trilling, but he never felt comfortable in that society.(Citation needed)

He then began to paint. Some of his works hung alongside those of Picasso in an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art.

Tired of New York, he moved in 1950 to San Francisco, where he began making experimental films and writing the music for short films made by other filmmakers, and got involved with the Beat scene.

On July 19, 1955, Kees's Plymouth Savoy was found on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge with the keys in the ignition. He had told a friend that he wanted, like Ambrose Bierce, to start a new life in Mexico. When his friends went to search his apartment, all they found were the cat he had named Lonesome and a pair of red socks in the sink. His sleeping bag and savings account book were missing. He left no note. No one is sure if Kees jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge that day or if he went to Mexico, although suicide is presumed.

Before he disappeared, Kees quoted Rilke to friend Michael Grieg, ominously saying that sometimes a person needs to change his life completely.

Career

Through the 1930's, Kees mostly wrote short stories through the Federal Writers Project, Nebraska, publishing them in literary magazines and intellectual quarterlies such as (Prairie Schooner, Horizon, Rocky Mountain Review). He continued to write fiction after leaving to work as a librarian. A novel, Fall Quarter, was completed in 1941, but its whimsical tale of a young professor who battles the dreariness of staid Nebraskan college life was thought by publishers to be too droll for a year in which war seemed imminent (it was eventually published in 1990).

Kees moved to Manhattan in 1943. His first book of poems, The Last Man, was published in 1943. He worked briefly for Time but was laid off in an employee reduction ("Just being away from Whittaker Chambers," he wrote to Malcolm Cowley, "makes one feel like a new man."(Citation needed)). His circle expanded to include Edmund Wilson, Allen Tate, Horace Gregory, Dwight MacDonald, and Philip Rahv, and his writing began to appear in a variety of publications, not only Time, but also the New York Times, the New Republic, Partisan Review, as well as Poetry and Furioso.

8XX by Weldon Kees, 1949. Courtesy Wikipedia.

Around this time, Kees stopped writing fiction. His new interest was painting, in which he developed skill with remarkable speed. Soon he was exhibiting alongside abstract expressionists Willem de Kooning and Hans Hofmann, and when Clement Greenberg left vacant the post of art critic for The Nation in 1949, Kees was recommended to take his place. The Peridot gallery twice presented Kees in a 1-man exhibition, and one of his pictures was included in the 1950 Whitney Annual.

While completing his paintings and writing his art criticism, Kees also assembled a second book of poems, The Fall of the Magician, published in 1947.

Kees decided to relocate to the West Coast in 1950. While continuing to paint and write poetry, he now developed an interest in traditional New Orleans style jazz and song-writing. He played the piano with professional jazz groups and peddled songs and lyrics to publishers (though with little success). He infrequently linked up with members of the San Francisco Renaissance (he read at Kenneth Rexroth's home), and he enjoyed the work of California artists like Clyfford Still.

In addition to contributing reviews and sketches to San Francisco dailies, he worked as a photographer with Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson for various projects they were developing for the Langley Porter Clinic at Berkeley. With Ruesch, he shared the authorship of Nonverbal Communication: Notes on the Visual Perception of Human Relations (1953), which can best be described as a proto-semiotic text that suggests a taxonomy by which to "read" visual signs and gestures that take their place as part of a network of culture. Though the photographs that Kees supplied are supposed to be merely illustrative, many of them display a dry and understated wit, and some even offer momentary glimpses into someone else’s life in a way that makes that life seem disturbingly askew.

In the Bay Area, Kees continued to paint, creating sketches for local revue. He also joined Michael Grieg on a weekly radio program from KPFA and worked on essays on popular art, including early jazz musicians such as Jelly Roll Morton. And in 1954, Poems 1947-1954 was published by Adrian Wilson, a Bay area publisher. Kees wrote the music for the short film Adventures of Jimmy (1950) by James Broughton, and Kees's song "Coastline Rag" was used in The Joy of Life (2005) by Jenni Olson.

Writing

According to critic Ian Hamilton, although Kees functioned as a painter, photographer, film-maker and musician it was poetry that really mattered to him. "In this field", though, "he was never greatly honoured in his lifetime. This is a pity because, at his best, Kees has a lot to offer. There is an offputting bleakness in his work, but there is also a stoical-sardonic vein that can be more attractively engaging than, perhaps, it means to be. There is also an impressively quick eye for social detail. And the character called 'Robinson', a sort of professional-class Prufrock, has an almost loveable forbearance. Robinson takes life as it comes but this does not mean that he enjoys what comes, or wants much more of it."

Publications

Poetry

• The Last Man. San Francisco, CA: Colt Press, 1943.
• The Fall of Magicians. New York: Reynall & Hitchcock, 1947.
• Poems 1947-1954. San Francisco, CA: Adrian Wilson, 1954.
• Collected Poems (edited by Donald Justice). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1960.
• Limericks to Friends (edited by James Reidel). Brooklyn, NY: Jordan Davies, 1985.
• Five Lost Poems (edited by Barry Moser). Iowa City, IA: Windhover Press, 1995.

Novel

• Fall Quarter (edited by James Reidel). Story Line Press, 1990.

Short fiction

• The Ceremony, and other stories (selected by Dana Gioia), St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1984.
• Selected Short Stories of Weldon Kees (edited by Dana Gioia). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002; Bison Books, 2002.

Non-fiction

• Nonverbal Communication: Notes on the visual perception of human relations (with Jurgen Ruesch). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1953.
• Two Prose Sketches. West Chester, PA: Aralia Press, 1984.
• Reviews and Essays, 1936-55 (edited by James Reidel). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1988.

Letters

• Weldon Kees and the Midcentury Generation: Letters, 1935-1955 (edited by Robert E. Knoll). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

Weldon Kees "1926" Poem animation

"Robinson" By Weldon Kees Poem animation

3 Poems by Weldon Kees

• The Beat poets
• List of U.S. poets
• Timeline of American poetry

References

• Bob Niemi, Weldon Kees: A critical introduction, 1985 (essays about Kees and a bibliography)
• William T. Ross, Weldon Kees (Twayne's United States Author Series, 484), 1985.
• Robert Niemi and Daniel Gillane, The Bibliography of Weldon Kees, 1997.
• James Reidel, Vanished Act: The life and art of Weldon Kees, 2003.
• Daniel A. Siedell, Weldon Kees and the Arts at Midcentury, 2003.
• "Kees to the City," SF Weekly, pp. 17 (July 27-August, 2005) by Matt Smith
• Lane, Anthony. "The Disappearing Poet." The New Yorker (4 July 2005): 74-80.

Fonds

• Weldon Kees Papers and Archives

External links

Poems

• 2 poems by Kees: "Early Winter," "The Beach in August"
• Weldon Kees 1914-1955 at the Poetry Foundation.
• Weldon Kees at Sister Kate's Personal Canon
• Weldon Kees at PoemHunter (38 poems)

Audio / video

• Weldon Kees at YouTube

Books

• Weldon Kees at Amazon.com

About

• Weldon Kees profile at the Academy of American Poets
• "Weldon Kees, the Elusive Bard of East 10th Street," The Local, East Village 
• Weldon Kees (1914-1955) at Modern American Poetry
• Weldon Kees at NCW (James Reidel's site)..
• The Cult Of Weldon Kees by Dana Gioia
• Weldon Kees and the Writers' Project: (Nebraska Federal Writers' Project).
• The Disappearing Poet - Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, July 4, 2005.
• "Weldon Kees and Robinson: Portraits in Absentia" at AGNI Online.