Someone must be desperate to find Weldon Kees material: though I am 158th in the Yahoo! Search Results for the man, someone thought it worth coming by.
As it so happens, I happen to have brought my Donald Justice-edited (1975) compilation of Kees’s poetry with me to this dreary Philadelphia Adam’s Mark. Hm. If you’ve heard of Kees at all, you probably know “Round” and perhaps the Robinson poems, “For My Daughter” is also oft-anthologized. Um. How about this short piece:
Colloquy
In the broken light, in owl weather,
Webs on the lawn where the leaves end,
I took the thin moon and the sky for cover
To pick the cat’s brains and descend
A weedy hill. I found him groveling
Inside the summerhouse, a shadowed bulge,
Furred and somnolent.—“I bring,”
I said, “besides this dish of liver, and an edge
Of cheese, the customary torments,
And the usual wonder why we live
At all, and why the world thins out and perishes
As it has done for me, sieved
As I am toward silences. Where
Are we now? Do we know anything?”
—Now, on another night, his look endures.
“Give me the dish,” he said.
I had his answer, wise as yours.
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Not quite representative of his work, but wholly within his “apocalyptic” attitude, I believe it has been called. Where Dobyns looks at the world in the same weary way, he always has a smile for it; where Kees looks, there is only wide-eyed witness.
Then again, it may be Kees himself, tired of life in Mexico (to which he of course retired after faking his suicide), wondering if life in America has changed since he left, or if he is remembered. If it is you, come back, come back! America hasn’t changed, but you knew that, even as you know that the language calls back to you, even if the music and the art do not.
10:06:51 PM 
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