Weldon Kees

Weldon Kees was born in Beatrice, Nebraska and attended Doane College, the University of Missouri, and the University of Nebraska, where he earned his BA in 1935. His poetry collections include Collected Poems (1960, edited by Donald Justice), Poems 1947-1954, The Fall of Magicians (1947), and The Last Man (1943).

Kees began publishing poems and short stories during college in journals like Prairie Schooner and Rocky Mountain Review. In 1943, Kees moved to New York City with his wife, Ann Swan, and wrote for Time magazine, The Nation, and The New Republic. Interested in art and music as well as poetry, he exhibited his paintings at the Peridot Gallery, which showed his work alongside abstract expressionists like William de Kooning.

In 1951, Kees moved to San Francisco, where he studied jazz piano and took photographs for the book Nonverbal Communication (1956), which he wrote in collaboration with the psychologist Dr. Jurgen Ruesch. He wrote theater reviews for the journal Poets Follies, and his reviews were collected in Reviews and Essays, 1936-1955 (1988). On July 18, 1955, his car was found abandoned on the Golden Gate Bridge, and he was never seen again.

Posthumously, many collections of his poetry have been published, as well as a collection of his fiction, Ceremony and Other Stories (1983) and the novel Fall Quarter (1990). James Reidel wrote and published the biography, Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees (2003).