Well Well Reality

Book excerpt: Poetry. WELL WELL REALITY is a collection of poems written in collaboration by Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop over a number of years. The distinct voices of these two momentously prolific poets merge to create a new, lyric voice: a vast, plural assemblage of name, gender, and language. "When Rosmarie Waldrop writes poetry, when she writes poems, she writes her poems: the poems, the poetry of Rosmarie Waldrop. When Keith Waldrop writes poetry, when he writes poems, he writes his poems: the poems, the poetry of Keith Waldrop. But when Rosmarie and Keith, when Keith and Rosmarie write poems together, whose poems are those poems? They are the poems of a third poet, whose name and gender and origin and language we do not know. But what we do see, and hear, are the poems."--Jacques Roubaud