Light While There is Light

“Beautiful, funny, wise, sad … universally admired by that small percentage of the human race that has read it, Light While There is Light is an instant eccentric classic.” —Jaimy Gordon“Waldrop’s remarkable patience with the unforgettable cast of characters in his ‘fictional memoir’ derives, I think, from how he understands their suffering and shenanigans and occasional cruelty as issuing from that fear of emptiness—a fear he takes seriously, shares… . Waldrop refuses to psychologize or allegorize, to excuse, pity, or condescend … it’s his restraint that allows Waldrop to depict so powerfully the world ‘as it was and as it is.’” —Ben Lerner, from his introduction“Waldrop’s Light While There Is Light: An American History treats his family’s errant religiosity, their constant seeking and sputtering, with the care of one unwrapping a delicate parcel. It’s astonishing, given the intellectual poverty he was raised in, that Waldrop, who died in 2023, became an accomplished poet and a professor of English at Brown … Light While There Is Light describes that emptiness and all that follows from it unlike anything I’ve ever read. Where the book should crumble into nihilism, it builds instead to a plainspoken mercy.”—Dan Piepenbring, Harper’s“Waldrop, not as well known as he should be, is among the most important writers, translators and publishers of avant-garde literature in our time.” —Publishers Weekly

Keith Waldrop (1932-2023) was born in Emporia, Kansas. He published his first book of poetry, A Windmill Near Cavalry, in 1968, and won the National Book Award for Poetry for his 2009 collection Transcendental Studies—A Trilogy. In 1961, Waldrop and his wife, Rosmarie Waldrop, founded Burning Deck, an influential small press that specialized in the publication of experimental poetry and prose. He was a professor of English at Brown University for 43 years.

Ben Lerner is the author of nine books of poetry and prose as well as several collaborations with visual artists. He is the editor of Keeping/the window open—Interviews, Statements, Alarms, Excursions, a collection exploring the lives and work of Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop.