Kees, Weldon

Kees, Weldon( 1914–55),
poet. Born in Nebraska, Kees lived most of his brief life in New York City and in San Francisco. He worked for Time magazine and was a painter, jazz pianist, and composer. His early collections of poetry are The Last Man (1943), The Fall of the Magicians (1947), and Poems1947–1954, all formalist in structure and tone. His reputation has grown steadily since the publication of Collected Poems (1960, revised 1975), edited by Donald Justice. A final posthumous work, Fall Quarter (1990), a satiric novel of academia, was edited by James Reidel Kees.