Semiramis If I Remember: Self Portrait as Mask by Keith Waldrop

From the Publisher

SEMIRAMIS IF I REMEMBER is a quietly remarkable meditation on life and death. Poet Keith Waldrup has seen much of both, and here turns his attention to all that can get lost in living, attempting to evoke and remember what remains. Waldrup's sixteenth book of poetry offers the reader instants from the whole life of the poet, from his earliest childhood memories and encounters with the possibilities of language to his later years of reflections, dreams, and vigorous struggles with darkness. With their references to the gothic and a pervasive recognition of absence, these are haunted poems. Among the many books by Keith Waldrup available from SPD is the recent HAUNT.

Publishers Weekly

Completing a trilogy that includes The Locality Principle and The Silhouette of the Bridge, Waldrop professor at Brown University, co-editor of the Burning Deck press and leading light of experimental poetry deals in premature death, aged death, biblical death ("in the Old Testament: no word for body"), "good death," the shifting subjectivity of death ("I live until I die. I die. Then he is dead."), displacement, lost people and lost belongings. Cumulatively, these absences afford preponderant evidence of life, which, in this book-length series, quietly and purposefully makes for a positive proof: "I look at them and/ wonder what it was I was trying to photograph.// I piss into the bowl. The sound reassures me.// ...The world begins in the evening. The year begins in/ winter." (July) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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