Keeping / the window open: Interviews, statements, alarms, excursions

Authors: Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop

Editor: Ben Lerner

Publisher: Wave Books (2019)

A rich array of materials coalesce here into a vibrant portrait, in text and image, of two extraordinary artists and collaborators. For nearly sixty years, the Waldrops have influenced multiple generations of writers through their own poetry and fiction, translations, teaching, and their press, Burning Deck, which published some of the most influential authors of late-twentieth-century avant-garde literature. This collection seeks to illustrate the many ways in which the Waldrops have expanded the possibilities of bookcraft, art, community, and literature.

"Keeping / the window open is a treasure trove, filled with complete or partial facsimiles of many now-rare publications and ephemera... There are poems, translations, a play, essays, and interviews, all of which serve to give the widest possible sense of their poetics and practice—the closest thing possible to an overview of two life-works that really permit of no overview."

-Barry Schwabsky

"Reading this collection of texts leaves one feeling that there is a great deal of possibility in the world of publishing and writing avant-garde works of literature, and, to be clear, a feeling-centered sort of avant-garde. That is, a writing not concerned with experimentation for the sake of experimentation, but a pushing of limits in order to allow language to speak to our deepest ideas and emotions."

–Allison Grimaldi-Donahue