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Clayton Eshleman (1935-2021) was a poet and essayist as well as Professor Emeritus of English at Eastern Michigan University. He founded and edited two of mid-century American poetry’s most seminal and highly-regarded literary magazines, Caterpillar and Sulfur. A recipient of the National Book Award and the Landon Translation Prize, he was the co-translator of Aimé Césaire: The Collected Poetry and the author of Juniper Fuse: Upper Paleolithic Imagination & the Construction of the Underworld. Between 1979 and 1986, Eshleman was a regular reviewer for The Los Angeles Times Book Review, contributing 51 articles on books by Rilke, Whitman, Bishop, Olson, Milosz, Montale, Ashbery and many others. He translated books by Pablo Neruda, Antonin Artaud, Vladimir Holan, Michel Deguy, and Bernard Bador. Eshleman also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and several research Fellowships from Eastern Michigan University. In addition to being shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition also received the 2008 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets.

The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition 2008 Shortlist

Judges’ Citation

When Mario Vargas Llosa refers to the work of Clayton Eshleman as a sort of heroic enterprise, he is hitting the target – life given as an act of love.