Friday Links
February 6, 2026
Weldon Kees: The Disappearing Poet
Night in July: A new poem by Weldon Kees
Tim Rudderow on Used Books
BEHOLD THE MAN! A Wayfare Poetry Contest
Melanie McDonagh on Converts: Graham Greene's Fraught Relationship with the Confessional
The 2026 Jane Greer Memorial Poetry Contest
“Shrove Tuesday” by Lucas Smith
“Cold Is a State of Mind” by Eric Cyr
Thomist Poets Reading Series with Tamara Nicholl-Smith
Weldon Kees: The Disappearing Poet
Dana Gioia has produced a wonderful film on the enigmatic poet Weldon Kees. From Gioia:
Weldon Kees is the most mysterious American poet of the twentieth century. He was brilliant, polymathic, and doomed. I first discovered Weldon Kees over fifty years in a Minnesota public library while reading a poetry anthology. As I finished the last of the eighteen selections of Weldon Kees included, I knew that I had found a major poet. How had such a superb contemporary poet escaped my ken? I resolved to go out immediately and find every collection of his work. However, there was very little about Kees. Over the next fifty years I researched and wrote about Kees extensively and have gathered an enormous amount of photo material and primary sources about Kees. This documentary film is a survey of Weldon Kees' strange and unhappy life. This video is the first major documentary film about Weldon Kees. I should note in 1993 Simon Armitage produced a segment for BBC called "Looking for Robinson" that was shot in a faux-documentary (what you would today call mockumentary style), though it focused mostly on Armitage's search rather than Kees himself and is no longer available anywhere.
Night in July: A new poem by Weldon Kees
On their Substack, Nimrod International Journal has a once lost, now found poem from Kees.
Tim Rudderow on Used Books
On searching for and finding a used copy of Kees’s poetry, after watching the documentary:
Copies at online booksellers were scarce, but given the prices, due to neglect rather than demand. There was a first edition rated fine, meaning it was exceptionally clean and in perfect shape, for $125. Further down the list was a later printing of the same edition, rated Good, which can mean anything, for $7.50. Sounds about right … I ordered it. The book arrived the day before a flight to Florida, so I stuffed in my bag to read on the plane.
BEHOLD THE MAN! A Wayfare Poetry Contest
James Matthew Wilson is the final judge. Submissions are accepted February 1st through March 29th, 2026 (Palm Sunday). Winners will be notified at the end of May and recognized at the summer Wayfare Festival. 1st: $1000, 2nd: $500, 3rd: $100. More details at the link.
Melanie McDonagh on Converts: Graham Greene's Fraught Relationship with the Confessional
Greene’s view of the world, as expressed in his work, was fundamentally altered by his conversion; as Fr Leopoldo Duran, a Spanish priest who became a friend later in his life, observed, “it was his marriage, bound as it was for disaster, which was the cause of Graham becoming . . . the writer who decided to make theology the backbone of virtually everything he wrote.” Greene would later repeatedly and wearily repudiate the suggestion that he was a Catholic writer; indeed, as early as his trip to Mexico in 1937–8 he welcomed being published by Longman, as being less likely than a Catholic imprint to brand him as such. But as Richard Greene says, this feeling was very much more true of the second half of his career than the first. “In the 1930s, Greene was explicitly struggling with the problem of how a Catholic sense of the soul and of providence altered the craft of fiction . . . Greene’s sense of craft is shaped by his faith—the faith and the craft are not separate.”
The 2026 Jane Greer Memorial Poetry Contest
Another reminder, lest you forget . . .
“Shrove Tuesday” by Lucas Smith
Here’s a story from Lucas Smith’s debut collection of short stories, Spare Us Yet and Other Stories from Wiseblood Books.
“Cold Is a State of Mind” by Eric Cyr
The Viks may not have made it to the Super Bowl this year, but you can imagine, along with Eric Cyr, what it might have been like for one super fan to witness a win by his beloved team. Come for the story, stay for the sweater.
Here It Snows in June and Other Stories by Eric Cyr is forthcoming from Wiseblood Books.
Thomist Poets Reading Series with Tamara Nicholl-Smith
Looking for some culture on Sunday evening, come listen to Tamara read some of her poems. She’s fabulous!
