Arthur Madson lived until April 2008. He earned his PhD at the University of Oklahoma, taught English for thirty-six years, most of them at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. A Shakespeare scholar who was also versed in the works of Melville and other literary greats. His work appeared in many magazines and four books--Good Manure, Blue-Eyed Boy, Plastering the Cracks and Coming Up Sequined.

Books by Arthur Madson:

About Out of the Welter:

"In these poems Art Madson shows us the bold, rich welter of his life experiences in terms so honest, so fearless, that the years have caused no loss of color at all. In '30s-era Cops and Robbers, he is one of a pack of little boys who waits, thrilled and terrified, for the excitingly evil Jon Dillinger to veer toward his peaceful town. He can be wickedly funny: his Silk Purse, an ode to hogs, is a hilarious and spot-on examination of the piggy nature. Yet in Sweet Sixteen Madson remorselessly examines his callous teenage self, a trapper so greedy he hated a raccoon for chewing its leg off and swindling me of its skin. He shows us, quietly, a stunning tragedy: the day on which his mother died from cancer, and (a few hours later) his father, distractedly driving onto train tracks, his intent never to be known. But many of Madson's richest poems, the most intense and passionate, deal with his love for his wife Clemmie. Elbows and Onions takes place in the kitchen, a divine welter of root vegetables and stew and an embrace so blazing, between this long-wed couple, that we see they are indeed incandescent/ for the other. Madson shows us that the past is not past; and that it will never be so."
—Arthur Madson