Born | Bernard Keith Waldrop December 11, 1932 Emporia, Kansas, U.S. |
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Died | July 27, 2023 Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. | (aged 90)
Occupation | Poet, professor, translator |
Alma mater | University of Michigan |
Notable awards | Chevalier des arts et des lettres, National Book Award for Poetry, Best Translated Book Award |
Spouse |
Bernard Keith Waldrop (December 11, 1932 – July 27, 2023) was an American poet, translator, publisher, and academic. He won the National Book Award for Poetry for his 2009 collection Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy.
Bernard Keith Waldrop[1] 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).[1][2]
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.[2]
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 1966-1967. 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.[2]
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:
Keith Waldrop died in Providence, Rhode Island on July 27, 2023, at the age of 90.[3]