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Robinson Alone

The Nebraska-born poet, painter, critic, and musician Weldon Kees traced a brief, bright path through midcentury America before vanishing in 1955, an apparent suicide. Among the poems he left behind are a particularly unsettling four that feature the mysterious Robinson: both a prototypical member of the smart set — masking his desperation with urbane savoir-faire — and an alter ego for the troubled Kees himself.

In ROBINSON ALONE, Kathleen Rooney performs a bold act of literary mediumship, conjuring Kees through his borrowed character to sketch his restless journey across locales and milieus — New York, San Francisco, the highways between — and to evoke his ambitions, his frustrations, and his skewed humor. The product of a decade-long engagement with Kees and his work, this novel in poems is not only a portrait of an under-appreciated genius and his era, but also a beam flashed into haunted boiler-rooms that still fire the American spirit, rooms where energy and optimism are burnt down to ash.

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 132
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780983700142
  • Genres
  • poetry, fiction
  • Release date
  • 2012