Rosmarie Waldrop
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Rosmarie Waldrop (born 1935) is a poet, translator and publisher. Born in Germany, she has lived in the United States since 1958. She is often associated with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. She has lived and in Providence, Rhode Island since the late 1960s.
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Early Life in Germany
Waldrop was born in Kitzingen am Main on August 24, 1935. Towards the end of the Second World War, she joined a travelling theatre, but returned to school after in early 1946. At school, she studied piano and flute and played in a youth orchestra. At Christmas 1954, the orchestra gave a concert for American soldiers stationed at Kitzingen. Afterwards, one of the audience, Keith Waldrop invited members of the orchestra to listen to his records. He and Rosmarie became friendly and worked together over the next few months, translating German poetry into English.
University Years
That same year, she entered the University of Würzburg, where she studied literature, art history and musicology. In 1955, she transferred to the University of Freiburg, where she discovered the writings of Robert Musil and participated in a protest against a lecture given by Heidegger. She then moved to the University of Aix-Marseille, where Keith spent 1956-7 on his GI Bill. At the end of the year, he returned to the University of Michigan. In 1958, he won a Major Hopwood Prize. He sent most of the money to Rosmarie to pay for her passage to the United States.
In the United States
The couple married, and Rosmarie started studying at Michigan, where she got a Ph.D. in 1966. She also became extremely active in literary, musical and artistic circles around the university and the wider Ann Arbor community. She began serious translation of French and German poetry. In 1961, the Waldrops bought a secondhand printing press and started Burning Deck Magazine. This was the beginning of Burning Deck, which was to become one of the most influential small press publishers of innovative poetry in the United States.
Poetry and Translations
Rosmarie Waldrop started publishing her own poetry in English in the late 1960s. Since then, she has published over three dozen books of poetry, prose and translation. One of the formative influences on her mature style was a year spent in Paris in the early 1970s, when she came into contact with leading avant garde French poets, including Claude Royet-Journoud, Anne-Marie Albiach, and Edmond Jabès. These writers influenced her own work, but equally, she became one of the main translators of their work into English and Burning Deck one of the main vehicles for introducing their work to an English-language readership.
Awards and Achievements
Rosmarie Waldrop has given readings and published in many parts of Europe as well as the U.S. She has received numerous awards and fellowships and was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.
Further Reading
Rosmarie & Keith Waldrop: Ceci n'e pas Keith Ceci n'e pas Rosmarie: Autobiographies, (Providence, Rhode Island, 2002)
External links
- Rosmarie Waldrop at EPC (http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/waldropr/)
- Burning Deck (http://www.burningdeck.com/)