Kerry Shawn Keys
Encyclopedia
Kerry Shawn Keys – American poet, writer, playwright and translator. He is a citizen of the United States and Lithuania
.
near the Appalachian mountain range. His father, Elmer Richard Keys, worked as a plumber and sold kitchens. Elmer Keys was of mixed Swiss-German and Irish descent, and had been orphaned at an early age when Elmer's mother died of pneumonia shortly after his father a chauffer, Whip Keys, shot in broad daylight in downtown Harrisburg his wealthy mistress and then committed suicide. This event marked both his father and the poet at an early age. The poet's mother, Helen Louise Kirk, of mixed English, Scottish and Irish ancestry, was a housewife and clerk typist. Both parents were active in sports, and his mother and older brother played the saxophone, and so athletics (in 1964 the poet was chosen as athlete-of-the-year in the Central Pennsylvania public schools) and music were very much a part of the household. The poet accredits his courting of the Muse of Poetry to his skill at stalking and to an inborn body-rhythm, and rhythms inculcated through music, dance, athletics, and silence. Both his parents shared a love for poetry as did Keys's maternal grandmother, but they were not schooled in it. The young poet from a very early age spent a good deal of time fishing and hunting with his father, and tramping the mountains around their family hunting cabin near Pine Grove Furnace and Fuller Lake. Keys often mentions the Blue Mountains and these outdoor activities as the true birthplace of his poetry.
Keys attended inner city, public schools. They were racially mixed – white and what was referred to as "colored" at that time. Soul music, bluesy rock, "hillbilly" tunes, and especially jazz
all combined to influence the rhythms and oral thrust that permeate much of Keys’ poetry. Another major influence from this period was the cadenced, visceral Sunday sermons of Christ Lutheran's spellbinding minister, Pastor Rudisill.
on several scholarships given partly as a result of a new "quota" system the Ivy League institution was using to recruit "Colored folk" and the economically disadvantaged. Keys took a leave-of-absence after his sophomore year (1968), and joined the Peace Corps for a 2-year stint as an agricultural assistant in the south of India in a town near Hyderabad. Here, for the first time, he had the leisure of reading dozens of books of quality literature, and after reading García Lorca
, Valéry
's essays, and Tagore
made the definitive decision to be a poet. He also delved deeply into Hindu religion and philosophy. And at this time the seeds were planted for his monumental, polyphonic epic poem, A Gathering Of Smoke, first published by P. Lal in Calcutta, and later by Three Continents Press in Washington, D.C. in 1986. Returning to Penn in 1968, he majored in English literature and took his B.A. in 1970. During those final two years, Keys was much influenced by an omnivorous reading of English-language poets from the canon, but particularly by Shakespeare
, Donne
, Keats
, Dylan Thomas
, Yeats
, Wallace Stevens
, and especially Pound
's Cantos. Other major influences at this formative time were Joyce
, Jung, Pablo Neruda
, Whitehead
, Nagarjuna
, Thoreau, Chuang-Tzu, and Bachelard
and Husserl
. After graduation, the poet lived in Center City, Philadelphia for two years, and started to read many of the poets of the 50's and 60's, most of which he came across via the groundbreaking anthology of the time, Naked Poetry, and through Robert Bly
's literary journal, The Fifties and The Sixties. Of considerable importance were Gary Snyder
and W.S. Merwin and early Robert Lowell
, Ted Hughes
, and Antonio Machado
. During this time, Willis Barnstone
's Modern European Poetry Anthology became an inexhaustible reference for further reading, and spurred Keys on to enroll in graduate school at Indiana University
at Bloomington
, where Barnstone taught. Shortly before matriculating, Keys married Ann Fletcher James, a Temple student from the Fishtown area of Philadelphia. While at Bloomington, Keys became close friends with the poet, Robert Bringhurst
, who became a kind of literary sidekick and example of complete dedication to the Muse of Poetry. Bringhurst was, perhaps, the only contemporary to exert an influence on Keys’ poetics other than the poet, Michael Jennings. Keys earned his M.A. in English Literature in 1973.
In 1973, Keys returned to Pennsylvania to live in the family's hunting cabin, determined to live simply, write poetry and do little else. Bringhurst joined him briefly, right after inaugurating Kanchenjunga Press with his own first book of poems, The Shipwright's Log (1972). The next book published was Keys’ Swallowtails Gather These Stones (1973). That was soon followed by Keys’ second book of poems, Jade Water (1974), designed and published by Bringhurst. Both of these poets were wary of the editorial competence and tastes of the larger publishing houses, preferring handsewn books and chapbooks. From the early 70s to the mid-80s, Keys and Bringhurst maintained an extensive correspondence now housed in Keys’ archives at Dickinson College
in Carlisle, and at the National Library of Canada in Ottawa
. It was Keys who first brought Bringhurst to Gary Snyder
's attention, and Bringhurst wrote a foreword to Gary Snyder
's recently reissued study of a Haida myth, He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village (2007). Robert Bly
also visited the poet at this time and encouraged Keys to move to Brazil, a move that Keys and his wife were already planning. From 1974 to 1978, he lived in Rio de Janeiro
, teaching, translating, and writing poetry. He soon joined the Vila Isabel Samba School (club). While in Rio, Keys became friends with Carangola and Lêdo Ivo and soon began translating Ivo and João Cabral de Melo Neto
, resulting in their publication by New Directions, and some years later a Selected Poems of Lêdo Ivo's, Landsend (1998) in Keys’ own Pine Press. Keys also organized and edited a groundbreaking, bilingual anthology of contemporary North American poetry, Quingumbo, published in São Paulo
.
In 1977, Keys and his wife returned to Pennsylvania and built a post-and-beam cabin, Oak-Omolú, in the hills of Perry County, where Keys lived for nearly two decades, except for two more years in Brazil (Salvador), a year of which (1983–84) the poet did research on African-Brazilian liturgy on a Senior Fulbright grant. At the behest of the Brazilian novelist, Jorge Amado
, Keys resided in the neighborhood of Rio Vermelho
. During that time, the poet divorced and was remarried to the Bahian, Ziza. Many collections of poetry saw the light during this period, with considerable thematic content: India; Brazil; the Tao te ching
; flamenco
; Central America; and of course the beloved Pennsylvania hill country. In these poems, Keys continues his phenomenological and lyrical exploration of Dasein in regard to etymology, rapture, and metaphor. Though like Auden and many other prolific poets, Keys does not hesitate to write songs; light verse; limerick
s; pithy satiric squibs; erotica; ideogram
s; haiku
; epigram
s, parodies
, and enigmatic epiphanies and riddle
s. His prose wonderscripts and plays are dense, and often dark and absurd. His children's books verge on fables.
Of considerable importance from the early 70s to the mid-90s was Keys’ relationship with the artist and flamenco guitarist, Frank Rush Miller (Paco de Nada). They were close colleagues and friends, lived together for a while, and on occasion performed in tandem in Pennsylvania, Spain, Central America, and Brazil. Another important link has been with his friend, the poet Gerald Stern
, which began in the mid-70s and continues to this day. Stern, the consummate, pastoral urbanite, came to live in rural Perry County at Keys’ invitation, and wrote many poems evoking the landscape, such as the much anthologized poem, Nice Mountain which visits the "great open space" that Keys homesteaded. Other poets during this time who became close, influential friends, were J.C. Todd (Jane Todd Cooper) and Craig Czury. Keys also gained a reputation as an outstanding reader of poetry, performing for academic and café-bar scene audiences. He was the American Poet-in-Residence at the Iowa
International Writing Program
for two semesters, and also worked as a cultural and language facilitator for international visitors from abroad. Keys again divorced in the mid-80's and then lived for some half-dozen years with the singer-songwriter, mythic mountain woman, and textile artist, Janet Pellam who with the poet "invented" a method of binding Pine Press books using a Singer sewing machine. In 1992, he received the Robert H Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America
. During the 70s and 80s, Keys occasionally taught English literature, grammar, and composition, and poetry at Penn State University, Harrisburg Area Community College (where he co-founded and co-directed the Wildwood Poetry Festival), and Dickinson College. His papers are archived at Dickinson College, Carlisle
, where he was an honorary Associate Fellow for 12 years.
With no health insurance and a severe injury to his leg and back while felling trees, Keys began toying with idea of a move to Europe, and visited Croatia
and what was then Czechoslovakia, and soon was spending considerable time in Olomouc
with the Czech poet, Petr Mikeš. It was from there in 1996 that he journeyed to Wrocław to visit the Polish poet, Urszula Kozioł, and then on to visit Leszek Engelking
, a poet and Pound's
and Nabokov's
Polish translator, in Warsaw
, where he met and established a close relationship with the Mexican ex-pat poet, Gerardo Beltrán (Zorro) and with the Lithuanian poet, Kornelijus Platelis (Zapata). They later became known as the Three Z's, Keys having already been dubbed with the sobriquet, Zopi, in Tela by the Garifuna community. When the poet moved to Vilnius
in 1998 to teach translation theory and creative composition for two years as Fulbright professor at Vilnius University
and Vilnius Pedagogical University
, he took with him Pine Press and soon began producing these "Singer" sewn books with the budding Lithuanian Press, Vario Burnos, under the direction of the book-designer and architect of words, Tomas Butkus. These eccentric, cheaply available editions of poetry had considerable impact on the local scene. Books by Tomaž Šalamun
, Charles Bukowski
, Vytautas Blože, João Cabral de Melo Neto
, Michael Jennings
, Brian Young
, Bill Shields, J. C. Todd, Craig Czury, Hailji, and others infiltrated the Lithuanian younger generation, as did poetry readings at Keys’ Hermescort Saloon-Salon. The poet was married for a brief time to the Lithuanian Presidential archival photographer, Džoja Barysaite. From 1998 to the present, Keys has lived for the most part in Vilnius, publishing, editing, translating from Lithuanian and Portuguese, and writing poetry, plays, children's books, and wonderscripts. Two significant books of Keys’ poetry (one a bilingual Selected, Vultures’ Country, and the other, Tao te ching Meditations, Bones & Buzzards) were published in the Czech Republic, both mid-wifed by the Czech poet, Petr Mikeš, and two books in Lithuanian with commentary by Kornelijus Platelis and Sigitas Geda
, both eminent poets of their respective generations. And Keys’ chapbook and book translations of Lithuanian poets include works by Eugenijus Ališanka; Sonata Paliulytė; Jonas Jackevičius; Sigitas Geda
; Laurynas Katkus; and others. Keys has also helped to usher into Lithuania bilingual editions a Selected Poems, The Banks of Noon, by Emily Dickinson
(translated by Sonata Paliulytė) and a Selected Poems of Menke Katz’ English-language poems, collaborating with Menke's son, the Yiddish scholar Dovid Katz
who is at times based in Vilna (Vilnius). He has at the same time published books in America: one with the Virtual Artists Collective; and three with Presa S Press, the most recent, Transporting, a cloak of rhapsodies, 2010, with cover artwork by the Paris-based Brazilian painter, Gonçalo Ivo, whose artwork is also found on Pine Press books from the 90s. A book of poems, Night-Flight, will be released in 2012 by Presa S. Press. Since the mid-90s, Keys’ poems and translations have been published extensively in European journals and in the USA. He performs poetry throughout Europe with the Russian/Lithuanian free-jazz percussionist and constellation artist, Vladimir Tarasov
. They released a CD with Prior Records in 2006. Recently he performed as Biblical Chronicler and Speaker in Tarasov's and Frido Mann's multimedia project, The Flood, and has recently ventured into voicing audio-e books for children. He has received translation and book-art laureates in Lithuania, and is a member of the Lithuanian Writers Union and PEN, and was Writer in Residence for SLS Lithuania 2009 and 2011. He resides in Vilnius with the Lithuanian poet, translator, and actress, Sonata Paliulytė, and their two children.
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
.
Notable awards
- National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, USA, 2005
- Poet-Laureate Translator for translation of a book from Lithuanian into a foreign language, Writers Union,Lithuania, 2003
- World Ambassador for Poetry, Republic of Uzupis, 2002 – indefinite
- Poetry Society Of America, Robert H. Winner Memorial Award, 1992, poem meditations on the Tao.
Roots and early life
Keys was born 25 June 1946 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA. Harrisburg is on the banks of the Susquehanna RiverSusquehanna River
The Susquehanna River is a river located in the northeastern United States. At long, it is the longest river on the American east coast that drains into the Atlantic Ocean, and with its watershed it is the 16th largest river in the United States, and the longest river in the continental United...
near the Appalachian mountain range. His father, Elmer Richard Keys, worked as a plumber and sold kitchens. Elmer Keys was of mixed Swiss-German and Irish descent, and had been orphaned at an early age when Elmer's mother died of pneumonia shortly after his father a chauffer, Whip Keys, shot in broad daylight in downtown Harrisburg his wealthy mistress and then committed suicide. This event marked both his father and the poet at an early age. The poet's mother, Helen Louise Kirk, of mixed English, Scottish and Irish ancestry, was a housewife and clerk typist. Both parents were active in sports, and his mother and older brother played the saxophone, and so athletics (in 1964 the poet was chosen as athlete-of-the-year in the Central Pennsylvania public schools) and music were very much a part of the household. The poet accredits his courting of the Muse of Poetry to his skill at stalking and to an inborn body-rhythm, and rhythms inculcated through music, dance, athletics, and silence. Both his parents shared a love for poetry as did Keys's maternal grandmother, but they were not schooled in it. The young poet from a very early age spent a good deal of time fishing and hunting with his father, and tramping the mountains around their family hunting cabin near Pine Grove Furnace and Fuller Lake. Keys often mentions the Blue Mountains and these outdoor activities as the true birthplace of his poetry.
Keys attended inner city, public schools. They were racially mixed – white and what was referred to as "colored" at that time. Soul music, bluesy rock, "hillbilly" tunes, and especially jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
all combined to influence the rhythms and oral thrust that permeate much of Keys’ poetry. Another major influence from this period was the cadenced, visceral Sunday sermons of Christ Lutheran's spellbinding minister, Pastor Rudisill.
Profession
In 1964, Keys went to Philadelphia to attend the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
on several scholarships given partly as a result of a new "quota" system the Ivy League institution was using to recruit "Colored folk" and the economically disadvantaged. Keys took a leave-of-absence after his sophomore year (1968), and joined the Peace Corps for a 2-year stint as an agricultural assistant in the south of India in a town near Hyderabad. Here, for the first time, he had the leisure of reading dozens of books of quality literature, and after reading García Lorca
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...
, Valéry
Paul Valéry
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...
's essays, and Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
made the definitive decision to be a poet. He also delved deeply into Hindu religion and philosophy. And at this time the seeds were planted for his monumental, polyphonic epic poem, A Gathering Of Smoke, first published by P. Lal in Calcutta, and later by Three Continents Press in Washington, D.C. in 1986. Returning to Penn in 1968, he majored in English literature and took his B.A. in 1970. During those final two years, Keys was much influenced by an omnivorous reading of English-language poets from the canon, but particularly by Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, Donne
John Donne
John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
, Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
, Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
, Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
, Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...
, and especially Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
's Cantos. Other major influences at this formative time were Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Jung, Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
, Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...
, Nagarjuna
Nagarjuna
Nāgārjuna was an important Buddhist teacher and philosopher. Along with his disciple Āryadeva, he is credited with founding the Mādhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism...
, Thoreau, Chuang-Tzu, and Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break...
and Husserl
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...
. After graduation, the poet lived in Center City, Philadelphia for two years, and started to read many of the poets of the 50's and 60's, most of which he came across via the groundbreaking anthology of the time, Naked Poetry, and through Robert Bly
Robert Bly
Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.-Life:Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, to Jacob and Alice Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving...
's literary journal, The Fifties and The Sixties. Of considerable importance were Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
and W.S. Merwin and early Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
, Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
, and Antonio Machado
Antonio Machado
Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz, known as Antonio Machado was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of '98....
. During this time, Willis Barnstone
Willis Barnstone
Willis Barnstone is an American poet, memoirist, translator, Hispanist, and comparatist. He has translated the Ancient Greek poets and the complete fragments of the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus . He is also a New Testament and Gnostic scholar.-Life:Born in Lewiston, Maine, Barnstone grew...
's Modern European Poetry Anthology became an inexhaustible reference for further reading, and spurred Keys on to enroll in graduate school at Indiana University
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
at Bloomington
Bloomington, Indiana
Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the southern region of the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 80,405 at the 2010 census....
, where Barnstone taught. Shortly before matriculating, Keys married Ann Fletcher James, a Temple student from the Fishtown area of Philadelphia. While at Bloomington, Keys became close friends with the poet, Robert Bringhurst
Robert Bringhurst
Robert Bringhurst is a Canadian poet, typographer and author. He is the author of The Elements of Typographic Style – a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type...
, who became a kind of literary sidekick and example of complete dedication to the Muse of Poetry. Bringhurst was, perhaps, the only contemporary to exert an influence on Keys’ poetics other than the poet, Michael Jennings. Keys earned his M.A. in English Literature in 1973.
In 1973, Keys returned to Pennsylvania to live in the family's hunting cabin, determined to live simply, write poetry and do little else. Bringhurst joined him briefly, right after inaugurating Kanchenjunga Press with his own first book of poems, The Shipwright's Log (1972). The next book published was Keys’ Swallowtails Gather These Stones (1973). That was soon followed by Keys’ second book of poems, Jade Water (1974), designed and published by Bringhurst. Both of these poets were wary of the editorial competence and tastes of the larger publishing houses, preferring handsewn books and chapbooks. From the early 70s to the mid-80s, Keys and Bringhurst maintained an extensive correspondence now housed in Keys’ archives at Dickinson College
Dickinson College
Dickinson College is a private, residential liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally established as a Grammar School in 1773, Dickinson was chartered September 9, 1783, five days after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, making it the first college to be founded in the newly...
in Carlisle, and at the National Library of Canada in Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
. It was Keys who first brought Bringhurst to Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
's attention, and Bringhurst wrote a foreword to Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
's recently reissued study of a Haida myth, He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village (2007). Robert Bly
Robert Bly
Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.-Life:Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, to Jacob and Alice Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving...
also visited the poet at this time and encouraged Keys to move to Brazil, a move that Keys and his wife were already planning. From 1974 to 1978, he lived in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
, teaching, translating, and writing poetry. He soon joined the Vila Isabel Samba School (club). While in Rio, Keys became friends with Carangola and Lêdo Ivo and soon began translating Ivo and João Cabral de Melo Neto
João Cabral de Melo Neto
João Cabral de Melo Neto was born in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, and is considered one of the greatest Brazilian poets of all time.He is often quoted saying "I try not to perfume the flower"...
, resulting in their publication by New Directions, and some years later a Selected Poems of Lêdo Ivo's, Landsend (1998) in Keys’ own Pine Press. Keys also organized and edited a groundbreaking, bilingual anthology of contemporary North American poetry, Quingumbo, published in São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
.
In 1977, Keys and his wife returned to Pennsylvania and built a post-and-beam cabin, Oak-Omolú, in the hills of Perry County, where Keys lived for nearly two decades, except for two more years in Brazil (Salvador), a year of which (1983–84) the poet did research on African-Brazilian liturgy on a Senior Fulbright grant. At the behest of the Brazilian novelist, Jorge Amado
Jorge Amado
Jorge Leal Amado de Faria was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 49 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands in 1978...
, Keys resided in the neighborhood of Rio Vermelho
Rio Vermelho
Rio Vermelho is a Brazilian municipality located in the state of Minas Gerais. The city belongs to the mesoregion Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte and to the microregion of Conceição do Mato Dentro.-See also:* List of municipalities in Minas Gerais...
. During that time, the poet divorced and was remarried to the Bahian, Ziza. Many collections of poetry saw the light during this period, with considerable thematic content: India; Brazil; the Tao te ching
Tao Te Ching
The Tao Te Ching, Dao De Jing, or Daodejing , also simply referred to as the Laozi, whose authorship has been attributed to Laozi, is a Chinese classic text...
; flamenco
Flamenco
Flamenco is a genre of music and dance which has its foundation in Andalusian music and dance and in whose evolution Andalusian Gypsies played an important part....
; Central America; and of course the beloved Pennsylvania hill country. In these poems, Keys continues his phenomenological and lyrical exploration of Dasein in regard to etymology, rapture, and metaphor. Though like Auden and many other prolific poets, Keys does not hesitate to write songs; light verse; limerick
Limerick
Limerick is the third largest city in the Republic of Ireland, and the principal city of County Limerick and Ireland's Mid-West Region. It is the fifth most populous city in all of Ireland. When taking the extra-municipal suburbs into account, Limerick is the third largest conurbation in the...
s; pithy satiric squibs; erotica; ideogram
Ideogram
An ideogram or ideograph is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarity with prior convention; others convey their meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, and thus may also be referred to as pictograms.Examples of...
s; haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
; epigram
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....
s, parodies
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
, and enigmatic epiphanies and riddle
Riddle
A riddle is a statement or question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and...
s. His prose wonderscripts and plays are dense, and often dark and absurd. His children's books verge on fables.
Of considerable importance from the early 70s to the mid-90s was Keys’ relationship with the artist and flamenco guitarist, Frank Rush Miller (Paco de Nada). They were close colleagues and friends, lived together for a while, and on occasion performed in tandem in Pennsylvania, Spain, Central America, and Brazil. Another important link has been with his friend, the poet Gerald Stern
Gerald Stern
Gerald Stern is an American poet. His work became widely recognized after the 1977 publication of Lucky Life, which was that year's Lamont Poetry Selection, and of a series of essays on writing poetry in American Poetry Review. He has subsequently been given many prestigious awards for his...
, which began in the mid-70s and continues to this day. Stern, the consummate, pastoral urbanite, came to live in rural Perry County at Keys’ invitation, and wrote many poems evoking the landscape, such as the much anthologized poem, Nice Mountain which visits the "great open space" that Keys homesteaded. Other poets during this time who became close, influential friends, were J.C. Todd (Jane Todd Cooper) and Craig Czury. Keys also gained a reputation as an outstanding reader of poetry, performing for academic and café-bar scene audiences. He was the American Poet-in-Residence at the Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
International Writing Program
International Writing Program
The International Writing Program is a writing residency for international artists in Iowa City, Iowa. Since its inception in 1967, the IWP has hosted over 1,100 emerging and established poets, novelists, dramatists, essayists, and journalists from more than 120 countries...
for two semesters, and also worked as a cultural and language facilitator for international visitors from abroad. Keys again divorced in the mid-80's and then lived for some half-dozen years with the singer-songwriter, mythic mountain woman, and textile artist, Janet Pellam who with the poet "invented" a method of binding Pine Press books using a Singer sewing machine. In 1992, he received the Robert H Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America
Poetry Society of America
The Poetry Society of America is a literary organization founded in 1910 by poets, editors, and artists including Witter Bynner. It is the oldest poetry organization in the United States. Past members of the have included such renowned writers as Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent...
. During the 70s and 80s, Keys occasionally taught English literature, grammar, and composition, and poetry at Penn State University, Harrisburg Area Community College (where he co-founded and co-directed the Wildwood Poetry Festival), and Dickinson College. His papers are archived at Dickinson College, Carlisle
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Carlisle is a borough in and the county seat of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, United States. The name is traditionally pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable. Carlisle is located within the Cumberland Valley, a highly productive agricultural region. As of the 2010 census, the borough...
, where he was an honorary Associate Fellow for 12 years.
With no health insurance and a severe injury to his leg and back while felling trees, Keys began toying with idea of a move to Europe, and visited Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
and what was then Czechoslovakia, and soon was spending considerable time in Olomouc
Olomouc
Olomouc is a city in Moravia, in the east of the Czech Republic. The city is located on the Morava river and is the ecclesiastical metropolis and historical capital city of Moravia. Nowadays, it is an administrative centre of the Olomouc Region and sixth largest city in the Czech Republic...
with the Czech poet, Petr Mikeš. It was from there in 1996 that he journeyed to Wrocław to visit the Polish poet, Urszula Kozioł, and then on to visit Leszek Engelking
Leszek Engelking
Leszek Engelking - Polish poet, short-story writer, critic, essayist, scholar, and translator....
, a poet and Pound's
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
and Nabokov's
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
Polish translator, in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, where he met and established a close relationship with the Mexican ex-pat poet, Gerardo Beltrán (Zorro) and with the Lithuanian poet, Kornelijus Platelis (Zapata). They later became known as the Three Z's, Keys having already been dubbed with the sobriquet, Zopi, in Tela by the Garifuna community. When the poet moved to Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
in 1998 to teach translation theory and creative composition for two years as Fulbright professor at Vilnius University
Vilnius University
Vilnius University is the oldest university in the Baltic states and one of the oldest in Eastern Europe. It is also the largest university in Lithuania....
and Vilnius Pedagogical University
Vilnius Pedagogical University
Vilnius Pedagogical University is a university in Vilnius, Lithuania, which specializes in preparing school teachers and other educators. As of 2007 it had approximately 12,500 students.-History:...
, he took with him Pine Press and soon began producing these "Singer" sewn books with the budding Lithuanian Press, Vario Burnos, under the direction of the book-designer and architect of words, Tomas Butkus. These eccentric, cheaply available editions of poetry had considerable impact on the local scene. Books by Tomaž Šalamun
Tomaz Salamun
Tomaž Šalamun is a Slovenian poet. He was born in 1941 in Zagreb, Croatia, and raised in Koper, Slovenia. He has published 39 collections of poetry in his native Slovenian language. Šalamun spent two years at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop in the 1970s and has lived for periods of time in...
, Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
, Vytautas Blože, João Cabral de Melo Neto
João Cabral de Melo Neto
João Cabral de Melo Neto was born in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, and is considered one of the greatest Brazilian poets of all time.He is often quoted saying "I try not to perfume the flower"...
, Michael Jennings
Michael Jennings
Michael Jennings is a professional boxer. He fights as a welterweight, and is a former British champion and World title challenger at the weight.-Professional career:...
, Brian Young
Brian Young
Brian Young is the drummer for the New York based power pop band Fountains of Wayne who have released four major label albums and scored an RIAA certified gold record for their single Stacy's Mom...
, Bill Shields, J. C. Todd, Craig Czury, Hailji, and others infiltrated the Lithuanian younger generation, as did poetry readings at Keys’ Hermescort Saloon-Salon. The poet was married for a brief time to the Lithuanian Presidential archival photographer, Džoja Barysaite. From 1998 to the present, Keys has lived for the most part in Vilnius, publishing, editing, translating from Lithuanian and Portuguese, and writing poetry, plays, children's books, and wonderscripts. Two significant books of Keys’ poetry (one a bilingual Selected, Vultures’ Country, and the other, Tao te ching Meditations, Bones & Buzzards) were published in the Czech Republic, both mid-wifed by the Czech poet, Petr Mikeš, and two books in Lithuanian with commentary by Kornelijus Platelis and Sigitas Geda
Sigitas Geda
Sigitas Geda was a poet and translator in Lithuania.- Education and career :He studied history and philology at Vilnius University. In 1966 his collection Pedos came out. He was also a leading figure in the Movement for the Support of Perestroika or Sąjūdis...
, both eminent poets of their respective generations. And Keys’ chapbook and book translations of Lithuanian poets include works by Eugenijus Ališanka; Sonata Paliulytė; Jonas Jackevičius; Sigitas Geda
Sigitas Geda
Sigitas Geda was a poet and translator in Lithuania.- Education and career :He studied history and philology at Vilnius University. In 1966 his collection Pedos came out. He was also a leading figure in the Movement for the Support of Perestroika or Sąjūdis...
; Laurynas Katkus; and others. Keys has also helped to usher into Lithuania bilingual editions a Selected Poems, The Banks of Noon, by Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...
(translated by Sonata Paliulytė) and a Selected Poems of Menke Katz’ English-language poems, collaborating with Menke's son, the Yiddish scholar Dovid Katz
Dovid Katz
Dovid Katz is an American-born, Vilnius-based Judaic studies professor, Yiddish specialist, and political activist, currently living in Lithuania.-Biography:...
who is at times based in Vilna (Vilnius). He has at the same time published books in America: one with the Virtual Artists Collective; and three with Presa S Press, the most recent, Transporting, a cloak of rhapsodies, 2010, with cover artwork by the Paris-based Brazilian painter, Gonçalo Ivo, whose artwork is also found on Pine Press books from the 90s. A book of poems, Night-Flight, will be released in 2012 by Presa S. Press. Since the mid-90s, Keys’ poems and translations have been published extensively in European journals and in the USA. He performs poetry throughout Europe with the Russian/Lithuanian free-jazz percussionist and constellation artist, Vladimir Tarasov
Vladimir Tarasov
Vladimir Tarasov is a Russian animator and animation director. He studied at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute from 1965 until 1970....
. They released a CD with Prior Records in 2006. Recently he performed as Biblical Chronicler and Speaker in Tarasov's and Frido Mann's multimedia project, The Flood, and has recently ventured into voicing audio-e books for children. He has received translation and book-art laureates in Lithuania, and is a member of the Lithuanian Writers Union and PEN, and was Writer in Residence for SLS Lithuania 2009 and 2011. He resides in Vilnius with the Lithuanian poet, translator, and actress, Sonata Paliulytė, and their two children.
Books of Original Work
- Night Flight, poems, Presa: S: Press, Michigan, 2012
- Transporting, a cloak of rhapsodies, poems, Presa: S : Press, Michigan, 2010
- Book of Beasts, a Bestiary, poems, Presa: S : Press, Michigan, 2009
- The Burning Mirror, poems, Presa :S : Press, Michigan, 2008
- The Land Of People; and Žmoniu Šalis (Lithuanian edition), children's book with artwork by the author and Ann James Costello, Kronta Press, Vilnius, 2007
- CD with Vladimir TarasovVladimir TarasovVladimir Tarasov is a Russian animator and animation director. He studied at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute from 1965 until 1970....
, poetry and percussion, Baltic Optical Disc, Prior Records, Vilnius, 2006 - Broken Circle, poems, Virtual Artists Collective, www.vacteam.com, Chicago, 2005
- Blue Rose Fusion, a selection of poems and prose for teachers, American Embassy, Berlin, 2004
- Conversations With Tertium Quid, poems, Lithuanian Writers Union Press, Vilnius, 2003
- 'Tao te ching Meditations, Bones and Buzzards, Periplum Press, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 2003
- The Miraculous Veteran, prose, Pacobooks, 2003
- Corresponding Voices (5 poets presentation), Point of Contact Productions, Syracuse, 2002
- Inclusions, poems, Vario Burnos Press, Klaipėda, 2002
- In the Pouring Rain, Gopiah's Tamil Poems, Pine Press, 2002.
- Return Of The Bird, prose, Pacobooks, 2002
- Pavlov's Duck, prose, Pacobooks, 2001
- Menulio Smukle (Pub of the Moon), Selected Poems in Lithuanian, tr. Eugenijus Alisanka, Vaga Press, 1999.
- The Festival of Familiar Light, poems, circa 1980s, Pine Press, 1998.
- Sorrows of an Old Worder, letter-poem, Pine Press, 1998.
- Moon Shining the Millennium, poems, Pine Press, 1998.
- Ch’antscapes, poems, Pine Press, 1998
- Turning the Mask, poems, Pine Press, 1997
- Krishna's Karma, poems, Pacobooks, 1997
- Beastings, drawings, with poems by Frank MillerFrank Miller-Cartoon artists:* Frank Miller , American writer, comic book artist, and film director* Frank Miller , newspaper comic strip creator* Frank Miller , editorial cartoonist...
, Pacobooks, 1997 - Ratoons, a theatre-dance piece in verse, Formant Press, Prague, 1996
- Narrow Passage To The Deep Light, poems, Pine Press, 1996
- The Nearing Notebooks, poems, co-authored with John BurnsJohn BurnsJohn Elliot Burns was an English trade unionist and politician of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly associated with London politics. He was a socialist and then a Liberal Member of Parliament and Minister. He was anti-alcohol and a keen sportsman...
, Pine Press, 1996 - Blues in Green, the Brazilian Poems, Pine Press, 1996
- Flamenco Songs, poems and songs, Pine Press, 1995
- Warm Springs, poems, Pine Press, 1995
- Krajina Supu/Vultures’ Country (Selected Poems in Czech and English), tr. Petr Mikeš, Votobia, Olomouc, 1996
- Decoy's Desire, poems, Pennywhistle Press, Santa Fe, 1993
- Fingerlings, 1993; Fingerlings 2, 1994, poems, Warm Spring Press
- The Hearing, poems, Warm Spring Press, 1992
- A Gathering of Smoke, Gopiah's South Indian Prose-Poem Journals, Writers Workshop Editions, Calcutta, 1986; Three Continents Press, Washington, D.C., 1989
- Seams, poems, Formant Press, design Robert BringhurstRobert BringhurstRobert Bringhurst is a Canadian poet, typographer and author. He is the author of The Elements of Typographic Style – a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type...
, Vancouver and San Francisco, 1985 - Loose Leaves Fall, Selected Poems, Pine Press, 1977.
- Jade Water, poems and a one-act play, design Robert Bringhurst, Kanchenjunga Press, 1974
- Swallowtails Gather These Stones, poems, Kanchenjunga Press, publisher Robert Bringhurst, 1973
Translations
- Bootleg Copy, selected poems of Laurynas Katkus, Virtual Artists Collective, Chicago, 2011
- Still Life, selected poems of Sonata Paulyte, co-translation with Irena Praitis, Calder Wood Press, Scotland, 2011
- Requiem, Ledo Ivo, poem, chapbook size, from the Portuguese, thedrunkenboat.com, on-line journal, 2011
- Life and Unbelief, (Gyvybe ir netikejimas), poems, Vytautas Kaziela, Lithuanian/English, Chapbook, 2009
- A Bug In The Brain (Vabalas Smegenineje), poems, Jonas Jackevičius, translation from Lithuanian with Judita Glauberzonaite, Vaga Press, Vilnius, 2007
- The Yellow Insect (Geltonas Vabzdys), a selection of poems, Jonas Jackevičius, translation from Lithuanian with Judita Glauberzonaite, Diemedzio Publishing, Vilnius, 2005
- Selected Poems of Sigitas GedaSigitas GedaSigitas Geda was a poet and translator in Lithuania.- Education and career :He studied history and philology at Vilnius University. In 1966 his collection Pedos came out. He was also a leading figure in the Movement for the Support of Perestroika or Sąjūdis...
, Biopsy of Winter, translation from Lithuanian, Vaga Press, 2002 - Six Young Lithuanian Poets, translations from Lithuanian, Vaga Press, 2002
- Eugenijus Ališanka, A Selection, translation from Lithuanian, Frankfurt Chapbooks, Lithuanian Post-Samizdat Publishing, Klaipėda House of Artists, 2002
- October Holidays and other poems, Laurynas Katkus, translation from Lithuanian, Vario Burnos Press, 2001
- Landsend, Selected Poems of Ledo Ivo, translation from Portuguese, Pine Press, 1998.
- In the Tracks of the Dead, tr. with Wanda Boeke from Czech, poems of Petr Mikeš, Pine Press, 1993
- Death and Life of Severino the Migrant, translation from Portuguese of João Cabral de Melo NetoJoão Cabral de Melo NetoJoão Cabral de Melo Neto was born in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, and is considered one of the greatest Brazilian poets of all time.He is often quoted saying "I try not to perfume the flower"...
's verse-play, Morte E Vida Severino, manuscript - A Knife All Blade, translation of João Cabral de Melo NetoJoão Cabral de Melo NetoJoão Cabral de Melo Neto was born in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, and is considered one of the greatest Brazilian poets of all time.He is often quoted saying "I try not to perfume the flower"...
's poem, Uma facá so lamina, Pine Press and New Directions Anthology, 1982. - O Pintor e o Poeta, The Painter and the Poet, Jose Paulo Moreira Da Fonseca, poems and paintings,bilingual Portuguese-English presentation, Spala Press, Rio de Janeiro, 1976
External links
- http://vacpoetry.org
- http://www.ugpulse.com/search.asp?ugaSrch=Beatrice%20Lamwaka
- www.presapress.com
- www.pshares.org
- www.youtube.com Kerry Shawn Keys
- www.youtube.com Vladimir Tarasov Quartet, "Nada"
- www.sumlitsem.org/Lithuania