In the Mis-/Fire of a Synapse: Memories & Impressions of Keith Waldrop

Author: Jennifer Moxley

Publisher: BlazeVOX (2025)

To all who knew Keith Waldrop, this book will give him back to you, and to those who didn’t, it will give him to you for the first time—fully and faithfully. With her brilliant flair for anecdote and radiant detail, Moxley captures a living sense of one of America’s greatest 20th/21st century poets. And while we will always have his work, we would not have his incredible person still virtually among us if it weren’t for this marvelous text. In a particularly telling passage of her opening poem to him, she manages to rhyme his incredible ability to listen with the fact that “He looks suspiciously like Ruskin”—that says it all. And in the ensuing text, she finds a few hundred other “says it all” images and incidents, all of which will have you laughing out loud. Her humor throughout is as wry, winking, ironic, and affectionate as Keith’s always was; clearly, the gift of this complex, brainy kind of humor was one of the many things they had in common. While the inspiration is pure Keith, the sparkle, the wit, and the solid genius of the work is pure Moxley.

—Cole Swensen