Author: Willis Barnstone

Willis Barnstone, born in Lewiston, Maine (1927), and educated at Bowdoin, the. Sorbonne, SOAS, Columbia and Yale PhD, taught in Greece at the end of the civil war (1949-1951), in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War, and during the Cultural Revolution he went to China where he was later a Fulbright Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University (1984-1985). Former O’Connor Professor of Greek and Latin at Colgate University, he is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Spanish at Indiana University. A Guggenheim fellow, he has also received the NEA, NEH, ACLS, Emily Dickinson Award of the PSA, Auden Award of NY Council on the Arts, Midland Authors Award, four Book of the Month selections, and four Pulitzer nominations. His work has appeared in APR, Harper’s, NYRB, Paris Review, Poetry, New Yorker, TLS. Some of his 90 books are The Poems of Antonio Machado:, Life Watch (BOA), Poetics of Translation (Yale), Ancient Greek Lyrics (Indiana), Restored New Testament (WWNorton), and The Gnostic Bible (Shambhala). Recent books are Stickball on 88th Street (Red Hen Press), Dawn Café in Paris (Sheep Meadow Press), and The Poems of Jesus Christ/from The Restored New Testament (WW Norton), Poets of the Bible (WW Norton), and Mexico in My Heart: Selected Poems (Carcanet).

Paintings of Poets and Magic Couplets

BRAVE POET JACK KEROUAC

In a jammed New Haven room, Jack Kerouac unshaven and breezy,
Mount Tamalpais, wakens and screams, Satori!

EMILY DICKINSON, INVENTOR OF MAGIC  (1830-1886)

Dazzling Emily Dickinson
Contrives her poems with Moon born of elation and Sun.

JOHN LENNON, TRAPEZE ARTIST OF WORDS (1940-1980)

DANTE ALIGHIERI IN LOVE (1265-1321) 

 Dante takes 100 cantos to declare his romance.
Exiled in Heaven’s circles, Beatrice gains one shoddy glance.

T.S. ELIOT (1888-1965)

Even high Priest Eliot in Love (+ hatred in his racial pee)
Knows when Death Ship anchors near, it’s good to flee.

Paintings of Poets and Magic Couplets full post

(282 words, 11 images, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)

Three Translations from Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire: Invitation to the Voyage

………….My child, my, sister, dream
………….How sweet things would seem
To go and live together somewhere,
………….To loaf at ease,
………….To die as you please
In a country resembling you!
………….Suns damp like a brew
………….Of nebulous skies
For my spirit now with charm
………….So mysterious
………….From your treacherous eyes
Glistening through tears with no alarm.

There, all is merely order, beauty,
Wealth, calm and sensuality.

………….Some furniture that wears
………….A polish of the years
Would decorate our chamber
………….With flowers of rare bloom
………….Mingling their perfume
With vague whiffs of amber,
………….The plush ceilings glare,
………….The mirrors’ deep stare,
The oriental magnificence,
………….All these things call
………….Cryptically to the soul
Their sweet native speech.

Three Translations from Charles Baudelaire full post

(632 words, estimated 2:32 mins reading time)