Keith Waldrop, winner of the 2009 National Book Award for Poetry.

AP / Tina Fineberg

PROVIDENCE — Professor Keith Waldrop skipped his Thursday class, but he had a good excuse.

The night before he won the National Book Award for poetry for his experimental work, “Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy,” published by University of California Press.

He and other writers were recognized during a black-tie dinner at Cipriani Wall Street in Manhattan, the 60th year for the literary event. “I was surprised,” said Waldrop, who has taught poetry and drama at Brown University since 1968.

In a telephone interview, Waldrop, 76, said he was happy to accept the award, but said the idea that “one book is better than another” is misleading, “since books are so dissimilar.”

Not everyone thought he would win, including a few of his colleagues at Brown. Waldrop’s wife, Rosmarie, went to the new Philip Glass opera during part of the ceremony, but returned for the meal. The opera, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, “was wonderful,” she told her husband. The two writers run a small publishing company, Burning Deck Press, from their East Side home.

About 640 attendees paid up to $12,000 per table to attend the event in a ballroom “as big as the British Museum,” Waldrop said.

The poet said he hoped the recognition would create a few more readers for his latest book. But he doesn’t expect it to make a huge difference.

His first book, “A Windmill Near Calvary,” was nominated for the same award 40 years ago. He didn’t win, and his publisher, a university press in Michigan, rejected his next book.

It didn’t stop the Kansas-born poet, who has published more than 20 collections of poetry, a novel and numerous translations, including “The Ruins of Providence,” “The Opposite of Letting the Mind Wander,” “The Silhouette of the Bridge,” “The Real Subject: Queries and Conjectures of Jacob Delafon, with Sample Poems” and “Several Gravities.”

“Keith has had a tremendous impact on contemporary experimental poetry, as both a writer and a teacher,” said Brian Evenson, professor of literary arts and director of Brown’s Literary Arts Program. “He’s been a real mainstay of the writing program at Brown. He’s a big part of our identity and our worldwide reputation.”

His latest work, added Evenson, is “a very rich book. We’re delighted that he won.”

Judges praised Waldrop’s work for demonstrating “language’s capacity to go to extremes,” and critics and admirers have called him a poet’s poet, graphic designer, publisher and “hoodoo god.”

Other National Book Awards winners were: Colum McCann’s “Let the Great World Spin,” fiction; T.J. Stiles’ biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, “The First Tycoon,” nonfiction; and Phillip Hoose’s “Claudette Colvin,” young people’s literature.

Winners each received a $10,000 prize.

Honorary medals also were presented to Gore Vidal and Dave Eggers at Wednesday’s ceremony in New York City. The comedic actor Andy Borowitz hosted the ceremonies.

“It was a bit tedious,” said Waldrop, who put his award, a statue, in a bag for the trip home to Providence later this week.

pdavis@projo.com