The Opposite of Letting the Mind Wander: Selected Poems and a Few Songs

Poetry. " All of Waldrop's work evokes the conflict between activity and passivity, doing and being, poetry as discovery and poetry as invention. In fact, reading Waldrop gives the reader two impressions, often in rapid succession: that of participating in a desperate search for a lost and possibly non-existent item; and that of sitting still, trying to be so quiet a tiny voice will reach one from a distance. The energy in these poems goes into the effort of thought, of meditation, not into the lines. Like Wallace Stevens in his early long poems (and like any phenomenologist) Waldrop strips perceptions of accretions so that they can be seen in their first light, without falsification. The effect is in both cases a poem that is smooth flowing on the surface but dense with effort and energy underneath" - Janet McCann, Parnassus: Poetry in Review.

Keith Waldrop is author of numerous collections of poetry and is the translator of The Selected Poems of Edmond Jabes, as well as works by Claude Royet-Journoud, Anne-Marie Albiach and Jean Grosjean. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and DAAD (Berlin). His titles include HEGEL'S FAMILY, THE OPPOSITE OF LETTING THE MIND WANDER: SELECTED POEMS AND A FEW SONGS, SHIPWRECK IN HAVEN: TRANSCENDENTAL STUDIES, The Balustrade, Light While There is Light, THE LOCALITY PRINCIPLE, ANALOGIES OF ESCAPE and HAUNT. He has twice been nominated for the National Book Award: for his first book of poetry, A Windmill Near Calvary (University of Michigan, 1968); and his most recent, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy (University of California Press, 2009), which won. With his wife Rosmarie Waldrop he co-edits Burning Deck Press. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and teaches at Brown University.