When French poet and proto-rock-star Rimbaud wanted to give up his life and disappear mysteriously, he ran away and became a businessman in Africa. When his admirer Jim Morrison wanted to do the same, he drank himself to death and left everyone to speculate that he had somehow faked it.

When the poet Weldon Kees wanted to disappear, he just did it. He told a friend on the phone that he was thinking of running away to Mexico. Then he placed a pair of red socks in his sink for some unknown reason and left his apartment, taking with him only a sleeping bag and his bank-book. His car was found by the Golden Gate Bridge, suggesting he might have jumped off- but no body or suicide note was ever found.

Kees completely disappeared, and no one knows to this day what really happened to him. Did he die that night after jumping from the bridge, or did he start a new life somewhere under an assumed identity- perhaps in Mexico as he had suggested?

All of this would be only mildly interesting except for the poetry he left behind, which has received little critical attention but which has always been highly admired in certain circles. The poetry of Weldon Kees is blackly pessimistic, with a cruelty of expression that seems more heartbroken than sadistic.

“Oh why go there when we know there is nothing there but fear?” Kees asked in one of his poems- and no one knows the answer but Kees himself.