Ausable Press: About Keith Althaus

BACK | SELECTED POEMS | AUTHOR EVENTS

About Keith Althaus

Keith Althaus is the author of Rival Heavens (1993, Provincetown Arts Press). His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, and numerous other magazines and journals. He has worked at many jobs, including loft renovation, tree planting, and clerical work, and now runs a gallery with his wife, the painter Susan Baker. They live in North Truro, Massachusetts.

IN HIS OWN WORDS

On Ladder of Hours:

“I began to write in the simplest and most straightforward language because I thought it would be easy. And because I had no audience, any attempt to impress or seduce the reader with rhetoric would only come back to me. Years later, by the time I realized how difficult it is to write simply, I was hooked on the promise of its reward.

“While technically these poems cover many years, more than half my life, it is in fact no time: the pleasures and sorrows that preoccupied me when I began have not gone away, but have grown clearer, sharper, more insistent upon being heard. And the mysteries I set out to explore have, as mysteries do, only deepened and widened. I stand no nearer conclusion now than I did then, yet, as if in compensation, writing has given me a second, concurrent life, more like a companion than a shadow.

“A poet can only hope his wild stabs occasionally strike bone, a startling occurrence for both the reader and writer. It’s fitting for an art born of solitude that we share these moments alone.”