Rober E. Knoll, ed. Weldon Kees and the Midcentury Generation: Letters, 1935-1955 (2003)

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Weldon Kees

(1914-1955?) 

Born in Beatrice, Nebraska (February 24, 1914),  was keenly interested, even as a boy, in music, art, and writing. In 1935, he graduated from the University of Nebraska. At college he began publishing short stories in mid-western literary magazines. In the eleven years between 1934 and 1945 he published more than thirty stories.

After college he began to write and publish poems. His first job was with the Federal Writers Project in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1937 he moved to Denver, Colorado and was the Director of the bibliographical Center of Research for the Rocky Mountain Region. There he married Ann Swain. In 1943 the couple moved to new York City and Kees wrote for Time magazine and published reviews in national magazines and newspapers such as The Nation and The New Republic.

In the mid-forties, he also began to paint and had a one-man show at galleries including  the Peridot Gallery. His paintings were often compared to abstract expressionists such as William de Kooning.

Kees's first collection of poems, The Last Man, was published in 1943. His second collection, The Fall of Magicians, first appeared in 1947. Kees moved to San Francisco in 1951. In California, he began to study and play jazz piano. With Jurgen Ruesch, Kees collaborated on the book Non-Verbal Communication (1956), illustrated with photographs by Kees. Much of Kees writing has been collected in the Reviews and Essays, 1936-1955 (1988).

In the mid-1950s, Kees became increasingly depressed. He divorced his wife in 1952. His final book, Poems 1947-1954, was published in 1954. On July 18, 1955, his car was found abandoned on the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge. He told a friend that he wanted like Hart Crane to start a new life in Mexico. He had also suggested that he might commit suicide.

In 1960 Kee's Collected Poems was first published. This volume has been reprinted twice. His collection of fiction Ceremony and Other Stories, first appeared in 1983.

Below is an autobiographical poem, set in his hometown of Beatrice.