Garrison Kiellor pointed out in today’s Writer’s Almanac that it is the birthday of Weldon Kees, a jazz musician, composer, playwright, journalist, and painter, and one of my favourite, more obscure modernist poets. Kees disappeared on July 18, 1955. His car was found abandoned on a road that went on to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where it is assumed he jumped, or disappeared into Mexico under the reccomendations of Hart Crane and Malcolm Lowry. Donald Justice, who edited his Collected Poems, published five years after his death, called Kees ‘one of the bitterest poets in history.’ His poem, ‘For My Daughter’.

Looking into my daughter’s eyes I read
Beneath the innocence of morning flesh
Concealed, hintings of death she does not heed.
Coldest of winds have blown this hair, and mesh
Of seaweed snarled these miniatures of hands;
The night’s slow poison, tolerant and bland,
Has moved her blood. Parched years that I have seen
That may be hers appear: foul, lingering
Death in certain war, the slim legs green.
Or, fed on hate, she relishes the sting
Of others’ agony; perhaps the cruel
Bride of a syphilitic or a fool.
These speculations sour in the sun.
I have no daughter. I desire none.