Weldon Kees

Harry Weldon Kees (February 24, 1914 – disappeared July 18, 1955) was an American poet, painter, literary critic, novelist, playwright, jazz pianist, short bank account writer, and filmmaker. Despite his brief career, Kees is considered an important mid-twentieth-century poet of the thesame generation as John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Lowell. His work has been immensely influential on subsequent generations of poets writing in English and new languages and his collected poems have been included in many anthologies. Harold Bloom lists the revelation of Kees's first book The Last Man (1943) as an important event in the chronology of his textbook Modern American Poetry as well as a photograph album worthy of his Western Canon.