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Willis Barnstone

Willis Barnstone   (born November 13, 1927) is anAmerican poet, memoirist, translator, Hispanist, andcomparatist. He has translated the Ancient Greek poetsand the complete fragments of the pre-Socratic philoso-pher Heraclitus (Ἡράκλειτος). He is also a New Testa-ment and Gnostic scholar.

1 Life

Born in  Lewiston, Maine, Barnstone grew up in  NewYork City. He went to the World Series with his fa-ther to see Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth play. He livedon Riverside Drive, facing the Hudson River. One dayin spring 1939, Joe the elevator man took him upstairsto Babe Ruth’s apartment on the 18th floor. He was inhis boy scout uniform. A newspaperman handed him apile of baseball diplomas which the Babe would give outthe next day at the World’s Fair to raise money for poorschool kids. The picture appeared on the front page ofthe Sunday edition of the New York tabloid  The DailyNews.He went to Stuyvesant High School, the George

School, and Phillips Exeter Academy, and received hisB.A. from  Bowdoin College   in 1948, his M.A. fromColumbia University in 1956, and his Ph.D. from YaleUniversity in 1960. He also studied at the University ofMexico, 1947, the Sorbonne, 1948–49, and the School ofOriental and African Studies at the University of London,1952-53. While in high school and college he worked asa volunteer with the Quaker American Friends ServiceCommittee in Aztec villages south of Mexico City. Ad-dicted to foreign tongues, in 1973 he studied Chinese atMiddlebury College in their summer language program.He taught in Greece at the end of the Greek Civil War

from 1949 to 1951 and in Buenos Aires during the DirtyWar from 1975 to 1976. He was in China in 1972 dur-ing the Cultural Revolution. A decade later he was Ful-bright Professor of American Literature at Beijing For-eign Studies University, 1984–1985.

2 Career

Willis Barnstone’s first teaching position was instructorin English and French at the Anavryta Classical Lyceumin Greece, 1949–50, a private school in the forest of

Anavryta north of Athens, attended by prince Constan-tine, the later ill-fated king of Greece, who was then nineyears old. In 1951 he worked as a translator of French art

Willis “Billy” Barnstone (left) and friend lending a hand to Babe

Ruth, New York City, 1939.

texts for Les Éditions Skira in Geneva, Switzerland. Hetaught at Wesleyan University, was O'Connor Professorof Greek at Colgate University, and is now DistinguishedProfessor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Span-ish at  Indiana University where he has been a memberof East Asian Languages & Culture, and the Institute forBiblical and Literary Studies. He started Film Studies

at Indiana and initiated courses in International PopularSongs and Lyrics and Asian and Western Poetry.

His center is poetry, but his books range from mem-oir, literary criticism, gnosticism, and biblical translationto the anthologies  A Book of Women Poets from Antiq-

uity to Now, 1980 (with Aliki Barnstone) and   Literatures 

of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1998 (with TonyBarnstone), and collections of photography and draw-ings.  Funny Ways of Staying Alive, Poems and Ink Draw-ings, 1993, contains 103 dry brush drawings. His New

Faces of China, 1973, a volume of photographs and fac-ing poems, reveals China during the catastrophic Great

Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Children play and smilewildly while austere adults, in identical prisonlike attire,sit on the pavement in empty Tiananmen Square.

1

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2   2 CAREER

Willis’s parents: Dora and Robert Barnstone, Maine, circa 1910.

In 1966 he founded and was director of  Artes Hispáni-

cas/Hispanic Arts , a slick, bilingual journal of Span-ish and Portuguese art, literature, and music, publishedbiannually by Macmillan Books and Indiana University.Two of its issues were published simultaneously as tradebooks: The Selected Poems of Jorge Luis Borges , guest ed-itor Norman Thomas di Giovanni, and  Concrete Poetry: 

A World View, guest editor Mary Ellen Solt. In 1959 hewas commissioned by Eric Bentley for the Tulane Drama

Review to do a verse translation of  La fianza satisfecha,

an obscure, powerful play by the  Golden Age Spanishplaywright  Lope de Vega; his translation,   The Outra-

 geous Saint , was later adapted by John Osborne for hisA Bond Honoured  (1966). In 1964 the BBC Third Pro-gramme Radio commissioned him to translate for broad-cast Pablo Neruda's only play, the surreal verse dramaFulgor y muerte de Joaquin Murieta (Radiance and Death

of Joaquin Murieta), which was also published in ModernInternational Drama, 1976.

Barnstone’s pioneer biblical work is   The Restored New

Testament  , Including The Gnostic Gospels of Thomas,

Mary, and Judas . In this annotated translation and com-

mentary, he restores the Latin, Greek, Aramaic, and He-brew names to their original form. For Pilate, Andrew,Jesus and James, one reads Pilatus, Andreas, Yeshua, and

Yaakov. To reveal the poetry of the New Testament, inthe gospels he lineates Jesus’s words as verse and rendersRevelation and the Letters of Paul into blank verse. In hisintroduction he calls Revelation (Apocalypse) the greatepic poem of the New Testament.

The  Library Journal  in its 7/15/09 issue wrote, “In anachievement remarkable by almost any standard, andsurely one of the events of the year in publishing,renowned poet and scholar Barnstone has created a newand lavish translation—almost transformation—of thecanonical and noncanonical books associated with theNew Testament. In part a continuation of his work inThe New Covenant, Commonly Called the New Testament 

(2002) and  The Other Bible  (2005), and in many waysthe completion of the pioneering efforts of other mod-ern translators like   Robert Alter,  Reynolds Price, andRichmond Lattimore,   The Restored New Testament  of-fers a completely new version of familiar and unfamiliartexts, restoring the likely Hebrew forms of names, andstrongly emphasizing the poetic and almost incantatorypassages that have been obscured within the New Testa-ment. Barnstonealso substantially reorders the traditionalarrangement of books for reasons he ably expounds in anextended and learned yet accessible preface. The highbar Barnstone has set for himself is the creation of an

English-language Scripture that will move poets much asthe 1611 King James Version moved Milton and Blake.Only time will tell if Barnstone has achieved his goal, but

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3

his work is fascinating, invigorating, and often beautiful.”

A Guggenheim fellow, he has four times been nominatedfor the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and has had four Bookof the Month Club selections. His poetry has appearedin The Paris Review , The New Yorker  ,   Poetry Magazine ,

The New York Review of Books , and The Times LiterarySupplement .  His books have been translated into diverselanguages including French, Italian, Romanian, Arabic,Korean, and Chinese. Barnstone lives in Oakland, Cali-fornia. A full-time writer, he gives poetry readings, oftenwith his daughter Aliki Barnstone and son Tony Barn-stone.

3 With Borges

Jorge Luis Borges had already lost his sight in 1968 when

Barnstone met him backstage at the 92nd Street the Po-etry Center in New York after a poetry reading he hadarranged for the Argentine poet. So began the literaryfriendship of his life. In 1975-76 in Buenos Aires he col-laborated with Borges on a translation of his sonnets intoEnglish. In his poem “A Blind Man” blind Borges looksat an infinite mirror, false and infinite that he cannot see,but which reveals all:

I do not know what facelooks back at meWhen I look at the mir-rored face, nor know

What aged man conspiresin the glowOf the glass, silent andwith tired fury.Slow in my shadow, withmy hand I exploreMy invisible features. Asparkling rayReaches me. Glimmersof your hair are grayAnd some are even gold.I’ve lost no more

Than just the useless sur-faces of things.This consolation is ofgreat import,A comfort had by Milton.I resortTo letters and the rose––my wonderings.I think if I could see myface I’d soonKnow who I am on thisfare afternoon.

In the States they went together to the universities of Indi-ana, Harvard, Columbia, and Chicago to give talks (char-las) that appear in Borges at Eighty: Conversations (1982).

In his memoir biography of Borges, Barnstone describesthe genesis of a short story that would appear posthu-mously. One morning at dawn he went to poet’s apart-ment. From there to the airport to fly to the Andean cityof Córdoba:

“These were days of the Dirty War withbombs exploding off all over the city. WhenI arrived, Borges was wide awake, tremen-dously excited. He told me his dream. ‘Iwasn’t wakened by my usual nightmare, butby a bomb, a few buildings away. So I re-membered the dream and knew it would bea story. I was tramping through downtownLondon, looking for a bed-and-breakfast place.Above a chemist’s shop I found a shabbily re-spectable place and took a room.The owner, a tall, ugly, intense man had me

alone and said, “I have been looking for you.”His glare paralyzed me but in the hour of mydream I could see him perfectly well.

You can’t get what I don’t have,” I said de-fiantly.“I’m not here to steal. I'm here to make you thehappiest man in the world. I have just acquiredShakespeare’s memory.”I took his bundle of papers, read one glo-riously lucent page clearly from an unknownplay, picked up the phone and wired BuenosAires for my savings, cleaning out my miserlylifetime account. I heard the bomb and woke.By then I could not remember a word of theburning text of Shakespeare’s memory. Thewords in gold on velum were there, in beau-tiful script but intelligible. I came out of myShakespeare business quick, clean, and emptyhanded. Except for the story.”

With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in

Buenos Aires   (Bloomington/London: IndianaUniversity Press,1993), 70.

In 1996 Barnstone published a sequence of 501 sonnets,including this poem on Adam and Eve who live the first

morning of the globe:

:::THE GOOD BEASTS

On the firstmorning of themoon, in landunder the birdsof Ur before theflooddirties the mem-ory of a couplebanned

from apples andthe fatal fire ofblood,

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4   4 WORKS 

Willis Barnstone (right) with Jorge Luis Borges on an ordinary

evening in Buenos Aires  , 1975 .

Adam and Evewalk in theghetto park,circling a tree.They do notknow the wayto make theirbodies shiver Ithe sparkof fusion, cannotread or talk, and

theyknow night andnoon, but not theenduring nightof nights that hasno noon. Adamand Eve,good beasts, liv-ing the morningof the globe,are blind, like us,to apocalypse.They probe

the sun, deathrayon the red tree.Its lightrages illiterate,until they leave.

Borges commented: “Four of the best things in Americaare Walt Whitman’s  Leaves , Herman Melville’s  Whales ,the sonnets of Barnstone’s  The Secret Reader: 501 Son-

nets , and my daily corn flakes--that rough poetry of morn-ing.”

4 Works

4.1 Poetry

•   Poems of Exchange with Six Poems Translated 

 from Antonio Machado, Athens: l’Institut françaisd’Athènes, 1951.

•   From This White Island , New York: Bookman,1960.

•   Antijournal , Vancouver, BritishColumbia: Sono NisPress, 1971.

•  A Day in the Country, New York: Harper & Row,1971.

•   New Faces of China, Bloomington, IN/London:Indiana University Press, 1972.

•   China Poems , Columbia, MO: University of Mis-souri Press,1977.

•  Stickball on 88th Street, Illustrated by Karmen Ef-

 fenberger, Boulder, CO: Bonus Book of   Colorado

Quarterly, 1978.

•   Overheard , With 27 Drawings by Helle TzalopoulouBarnstone. Bloomington, IN: Raintree Press, Lim-ited Edition, 1979

•   A Snow Salmon Reached the Andes Lake, NewYork/Austin: Curbstone Press, 1980.

•  Ten Gospels and a Nightingale, Brookston, IN: Tri-

angular Press, Limited Edition, 1981.

•   The Alphabet of Night , Blomington, IN: RaintreePress, Limited Edition, 1984.

•   Five A.M. in Beijing, Riverdale-on-Hudson: SheepMeadow Press,1987.

•   Funny Ways of Staying Alive, Poems and Ink Draw-ings. Hanover/London:   University Press of NewEngland, 1993.

•   The Secret Reader: 501 Sonnets,  Hanover/London:

University Press of New England,1996.•   Algebra ofNight: New & Selected Poems 1948-1998 ,

Riverdale-on-Hudson: Sheep Meadow Press,1998.

•   Life Watch, Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2003.

•   Life Watch, Translated into Arabic by Abed Ish-mael, Damascus, Syria: Al-Mada Publishing Com-pany, 2004.

•  Stickball on 88th Street , Pasadena, Red Hen Press,2011.

•   Café de l'Aube à Paris, Dawn Café in Paris: Poems Composed in French + Their Translation in English,

Riverdale-on-Hudson: Sheep Meadow Pres, 2011.

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4.5 Translations    5

4.2 Memoir

•  From Hawthorne’s Gloom to a Whitewashed Island ,Edited by Joyce Nakamura, Detroit/London: Con-temporary Authors: Autobiography Series, GaleResearch Inc., Volume 15, 1992.

•   With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires: 

A Memoir , Champaign-Urbana:  University of Illi-nois Press, 1993.

Borges, într-o seară obişnuită, la Buenos Aires ,Translated into Romanian by Mihnea Gafiţa,Bucureşti, România: Curtea Veche Publishing,2002.

With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos 

Aires (A Memoir), Translated into Arabic byDr. Abed Ishamael, Damacus, Syria: Al-Mada

Publishing Company, 2002.

•   Sunday Morning in Fascist Spain: A European Mem-

oir (1948–1953), Carbondale, IL: Southern IllinoisUniversity Press, 1993.

•   We Jews and Blacks: Memoir with Poems: With a

Dialogue and Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa, Bloom-ington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004.

4.3 Literary criticism

•

  Borges at Eighty: Conversations.  Bloomington: In-diana University Press, 1982.

Conversations avec J.L.Borge a l`occasion de

son 80e anniversaire, Presentées par WillisBarnstone, Traduites de l'Americain au fran-cais par Anne La Flaquière, Paris: EditionsRamsay.

Jorge Luis Borges, Conversazioni Americane, Acura di Willis Barnstone, Traduzione in Ital-iano di Franco Mogni, Roma: Editori Riuniti,1984.

Borges at Eighty   Chinese edition, Beijing,2003.

•  The Poetics of Ecstasy: from Sappho to Borges , NewYork: Holmes & Meier, 1983.

•   The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Prac-

tice, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

4.4 Religious scriptures

•   The Other Bible: Jewish  Pseudepigrapha , Christian

Apocrypha , Gnostic  Scriptures, Kabbalah , Dead SeaScrolls , Edited with Introductions, San Francisco:HarperSan Francisco, 1984.

Sumgyojin Songso   (translation of   The Other 

Bible into Korean), Translation by Yi Tong-jin,Soul, Korea: Munhak Such’op, 1994, 2 vol;2nd expanded ed., 3 volumes, 2005.

•   The Apocalypse:  Book of Revelation , A New Trans-

lation with Introduction, New York: New Direc-tions, 2000.

•   The Art of Worldly Wisdom, by Gracian Baltazar,Edited and with Introduction by Willis Barnstoneand with Translation by J. Joseph Jacobs and WillisBarnstone, Boston: Shambhala Classics, 2000.

•   The New   Covenant : The Four Gospels and Apoc-

alypse, Newly Translated from the Greek and In-

 formed by Semitic Sources , New York: River-head/Penguin Group, 2002.

•   The Gnostic Bible: Gnostic Texts of Mystical Wisdom

 from the Ancient and Medieval Worlds---Pagan,

Jewish, Christian,  Mandaean , Islamic, and  Cathar ,(edited by Willis Barnstone and   Marvin Meyer),Boston & London: Shambhala Books, 2003;   The

Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded, Including the

Gospel of Judas,   (edited by Willis Barnstone andMarvin Meyer), Boston: Shambhala Books, 2009.

•   The Gnostic Bible: Book and Audio-CD Set ,   The

Gnostics and Their Scriptures and 3 CDs , Edited byWillis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer; Read by Willis

Barnstone, Marvin Meyer, and Nancy Lesniewski,Boston & London: Shambhala Books, 2008.

•  The Restored New Testament Including The Gnos-

tic Gospels of Thomas, Mary, and Judas, Newly

Translated from the Greek and Informed by Semitic 

Sources , New York/London: W.W. Norton, 2009.

•   Essential Gnostic Scriptures , Boston & London:Shambhala, 2010.

4.5 Translations

•   Eighty Poems of   Antonio Machado, Jacket draw-ing by Pablo Picasso, Drawings by  William Bai-ley, Introduction by John Dos Passos, Reminiscenceby Juan Ramon Jimenez. New York: Las Ameri-cas,1959.

•   The Other Alexander , Margarita Liberaki, withForeword by Albert Camus, a Modern Greek noveltranslated by Willis Barnstone and Helle Barnstone,New York: Noonday Books, 1959.

•   Greek Lyric Poetry, Introduction by William Mc-

Culloh. New York: Bantam Classics, 1962; 2nded., with drawings by Helle Tzalopoulou Barnstone,Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967.

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6   4 WORKS 

•   Mexico Before   Cortez: Art, History, Legend   byIgnacio Bernal, Translation and Introduction byWillis Barnstone, New York: Doubleday (Dolphin),1963; Peter Smith, 1964.

•   Physiologus    Theobaldi Episcopi De Naturis 

Duodecim Animalium, Bishop Theobald’s Bestiaryof Twelve Animals , Latin text with translations,Lithographs by Rudy Pozzatti. Bloomington, IN:Indiana University, 1964.

•   Sappho: Lyrics in the Original Greek with Transla-

tions , Introduction by Willis Barnstone, Forewordby Andrew Burn. New York: Doubleday Anchor,1965; 2nd ed., New York:  New York UniversityPress.

•  The Poems of  Saint John of the Cross , Introductionand Translations, Bloomington, IN.: Indiana Uni-

versity. Press, 1967.

The Poems of Saint John of the Cross , rev. ed.,Introduction and Translations, New Directions:New York, 1972.

•  The Song of Songs : Shir Hashirim, (translated fromthe Masoretic Hebrew text). Athens, Greece: Ke-dros, 1970; 2nd rev. ed., Los Angeles: Sun & MoonPress, 2002.

•   The Poems of   Mao Tse-tung, Translation with KoChing-po, Introduction, Notes by Willis Barnstone,New York: Harper & Row, 1972; 2nd. ed., London:Barrie & Jenkins Ltd., 1972.

The Poems of Mao Tse-tung, rev. ed., Transla-tion with Ko Ching-po, Introduction, Notes byWillis Barnstone, New York: Bantam Books.,1972.

•   My Voice Because of You: 70 poems ,  Pedro Sali-nas, Introduction and Translations, Preface by Jorge

Guillén, Albany, New York: State University ofNew York Press, 1976.

•  Radiance and Death of Joaquin Murieta  by  PabloNeruda, Translated by Willis Barnstone, Modern In-

ternational Drama, Vol. 10, Number 1, 1976.

•   The Dream Below the Sun: Selected Poems of An-

tonio Machado, Cover drawing by Pablo Picasso,Drawings by William Bailey, Introduction by JohnDos Passos, Reminiscence by Juan Ramon Jimenez,Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1981.

•   The Unknown Light: The Poems of   Fray Luis deLeon, Introduction and Translations, Albany, NewYork: State University of New York Press, 1979,

•   Bird of Paper: Selected Poems of  Vicente Aleixan-

dre, Preface by Vicente Aleixandre, Translations byWillis Barnstone and David Garrison, Pittsburgh:International Forum, Byblos Editions, VI, 1981;2nd ed., Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1982.

•   Twenty-four Conversations with Borges: Includ-ing a Selection of Poems , Interviews by RosbertoAlifano 1981-1983, Edited by Nicomedes SuarezArauz, Translations by Willis Barnstone, NewYork/Housatonic, MA: Grove Press/Lascaux Pub-lishers, 1984.

•   Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Selected Poems of 

Wang Wei , Translations by Willis Barnstone, TonyBarnstone, and Xu Haixin. Beijing, China: ForeignLiterature Press (Panda Books), 1989.

•   Cantico espiritual: The Spiritual Canticle of St.John

of the Cross , Austin: W. Thomas Taylor, limitededition, 1990.

•   Laughing Lost in the Mountains: The Poems of Wang

Wei , Introduction by Willis Barnstone and TonyBarnstone, Translations by Willis Barnstone, TonyBarnstone, and Xu Haixin, with Drybrush Drawingsby Willis Barnstone, Hanover, NH. University Pressof New England, 1992.

•   Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet: (Francisco

de Quevedo ,   Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz ,   Antonio

Machado , Federico Garcia Lorca , Jorge Luis Borges  ,Miguel Hernandez: Essays and Translations , Car-bondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993.

•   The Courage of the Rainbow by Bronislava Volkavá,Introduction by Willis Barnstone, Translations byauthor and Willis Barnstone, Andrew Durkin, Gre-gory Orr, andLilliParott, The SheepMeadowPress:Riverdale-on-Hudson: New York, 1993.

•   The Poems of Sappho: A New Translation, Trans-lation and Introduction, Los Angeles: Sun & MoonPress, 1997.

•   To Touch the Sky: Spiritual, Mystical, and Philo-

sophical Poems in Translation, New Directions, NewYork, 1999.

•   Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio

Machado, Port Townsend, WA:   Copper CanyonPress, 2004.

•   Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke, (bilingualedition), Translated with an Introduction, Boston:Shambhala Books, 2004.

•   Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho, A New Transla-tion, Translated by Willis Barnstone, With Epilogueand Metrical Guide by William McCulloh, 2006.

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4.7 Fellowships    7

•   The Poems of   Mao Zedong, Introduction, Trans-lations, and Notes, University of California Press,2008.

•   The Complete Poems of Sappho,, Translated with anIntroduction, Boston: Shambhala Books, 2009.

•   Ancient Greek Lyrics , Translated by Willis Barn-stone with an Introduction by William McCulloh,Indiana University Press, 2009.

•   Love Poems by Pedro Salinas: My Voice Because of 

You and Letter Poems to Katherine, Translated withan Introduction, Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 2010.

•   Café de l'Aube à Paris, Dawn Café in Paris: Poems 

Composed in French + Their Translation in English,

Riverdale-on-Hudson: Sheep Meadow Pres, 2011.

4.6 Anthologies and editions

•   Rinconete y Cortadillo   by   Miguel de CervantesEdited by Willis Barnstone and Hugh Harter. NewYork: Las Americas, 1960.

•   Modern European Poetry, Willis Barnstone; Individ-ual sections edited by Kimon Friar, Greek Poetry;Patricia Terry, French Poetry; Arthur Wensinger,German Poetry; George Reavy, Russian Poetry; So-

nia Raiziss and Alfred de Palchi, Italian Poetry; An-gel Flores, Spanish Poetry. New York: BantamBooks (Bantam Classics), 1966.

•   Concrete Poetry: A World View, Edited by MaryEllen Solt  and Willis Barnstone, Introduction byMary Ellen Solt, Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 1969.

•   Eighteen Texts: Writings by Contemporary Greek Au-

thors , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1972.

•   A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now,Aliki Barnstone and Willis Barnstone, New York:Schocken Books, 1980; 2nd edition. New York:Schocken Books/Pantheon, 1992.

•  The Literatures of Asia, Africa, and Latin America,Willis Barnstone and Tony Barnstone. New York:Prentice Hall, 1998.

•   Literatures of Latin America, New York: PrenticeHall, 2002.

•  Literatures of the Middle East , Tony Barnstone andWillis Barnstone, New York: Penguin-Putnam,2002.

4.7 Fellowships

•  Guggenheim Fellowship, Madrid, Spain, 1961-62.

•  American Council of Learned Societies, Athens,Greece, 1968-69.

•   Fulbright   Senior Teaching Fellowship, BuenosAires, Argentina, 1975-76.

•  National Endowment for the Humanities (senior re-search fellowship), New York, 1979-80.

•   Fulbright   Senior Research Fellowship, Madrid,Cantabria, Spain, 1981-2.

•  National Endowment for the Arts, Madrid, Spain,1983-84.

•   Fulbright   Senior Teaching Fellowship, Beijing,

China, 1984-85.

4.8 Awards

•  Pulitzer Prize Nomination for poetry for From This 

White Island , Bookman, N.Y., 1960.

•  Cecil Hemley Memorial Award of the Poetry Soci-ety of America, 1968.

•  A Breakthrough Book for  China Poems , Universityof Missouri Press, 1971.

•  Indiana University Writers Conference Award forthe Most Distinguished Work of Children’s Litera-ture for A Day in the Country, Poems byWillis Barn-stone, Pictures by Howard Knotts,  Harper & Row,1971.

•  Pulitzer Prize Nomination for Poetry for China Po-

ems , University of Missouri Press, 1977.

•  Lucille Medwick Memorial Award for  God  of thePoetry Society of America, 1978.

•  Colorado Quarterly Annual Poetry Award for Stick-

ball on 88th Street , 1978.

•   Gustav Davidson Memorial Award of the Poetry So-ciety of America, 1980.

•   Chicago Review Annual Award for Best Poem of theYear, 1980.

•  Bowdoin College Doctor of Letters, 1981.

•   Lucille Medwick Memorial Award of the Poetry So-ciety of America, 1982.

•  Emily Dickinson  Award of the  Poetry Society ofAmerica, 1985.

•   W. H. Auden Award of the New York State Councilon the Arts, 1986.

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8   6 EXTERNAL LINKS 

•   Gustav Davidson Memorial Award of the Poetry So-ciety of America, 1988.

•  National Poetry Competition Award of the Chester.H. Jones Foundation, 1988.

•  PEN American Center  /  Book of the Month ClubTranslation Award for   Six Masters of the Spanish

Sonnet , 1994.

•   Choice’s “Outstanding Academic Book, 1993” forSix Masters of the Spanish Sonnet , 1994.

•  Pulitzer Prize Nomination for Poetry for The Secret 

Reader. 501 Sonnets  University Press of New Eng-land, 1996.

•  Pulitzer Prize Nomination for Poetry for Algebra of 

Night: New & Selected Poems 1948-1998, 2000.

•  Midland Authors Award in Poetry, for  Algebra of 

Night: New & Selected Poems 1948-1998 , 2000.

•   Lannan Literary Awards, 2003 for   Border of a

Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado, 2004.

•  Northern California Book Awards for  Border of a

Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado, 2004.

•  American Literary Translators Association   30th

Anniversary Honors Award, November 9, 2007.

5 References

•   Christian, Graham.   LJ Talks to Willis Barnstone: 

Poet, Translator, Scholar , 7/21/2009, Library Jour-nal, New York.

•  Library Journal, 7/15/2009 | The Restored New Tes-

tament: A New Translation with Commentary, In-

cluding the Gnostic Gospels, Thomas, Mary, and Ju-das . Norton. Oct. 2009. 1504 pp. index. trans.from Greek by Willis Barnstone. ISBN 978-0-393-06493-3.

•  Contemporary Authors, 1976, pp. 52–53.

•  Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, vol.15, 1992, pp. 47–108.

•  Contemporary Authors New Revisions Series, vol.68, (1998), pp. 20–23.

•   Something About the Author, vol. 20, 1980, pp. 3–4.

6 External links

•  http://www.willisbarnstone.com

•  http://www.barnstone.com

•

 http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R912161000•   Willis Barnstone Translation Prize

•  http://www.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinmagazine/archives/features/001541.shtml

•  http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/events/archives/002496.shtml

•  http://www.indiana.edu/~{}alldrp/members/barnstone.html

•  http://www.fishousepoems.org/archives/willis_

barnstone/index.shtml•  http://poemsintranslation.blogspot.com/2009/10/

review-six-masters-of-spanish-sonnet.html

•

8/16/2019 Willis Barnstone.pdf

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/willis-barnstonepdf 9/9

9

7 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

7.1 Text

•   Willis Barnstone  Source:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Barnstone?oldid=714558474  Contributors:  Ukexpat, Rich Farmbrough,YUL89YYZ, Djsasso, Woohookitty, Ttwaring, Teb728, SmackBot, Chris the speller, Egsan Bacon, Ser Amantio di Nicolao, Szfski, Kei-thh, Cydebot, Lugnuts, Synergy, Shirt58, Cynwolfe, Waacstats, JaGa, R'n'B, Jrcla2, Jevansen, Tataryn, Mr.Z-bot, Fadesga, Niceguyedc,Brewcrewer, SchreiberBike, Catalographer, XLinkBot, Baseballtom, Andreasmperu, Galoubet, RCFrancis, Barnstone, Fishouse, LilHelpa,Leforain, Wi2llis, FrescoBot, Books2read, John of Reading, Willis Barnstone, Snotbot, Hazhk, Markbackes1, Rosiposi, CCPeditorial, BobRe-born, Khazar2, Mogism, VIAFbot, KasparBot and Anonymous: 14

7.2 Images

•  File:Billy_and_the_babe.jpg   Source:    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Billy_and_the_babe.jpg   License:    CC0Contributors:  Own work Original artist:  Barnstone

•  File:Doraandrobert.jpg Source:  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Doraandrobert.jpg License:  CC0  Contributors: 

Own work Original artist:  Barnstone

•  File:Hongcun._willis.jpg Source:  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Hongcun._willis.jpg License:  GFDL Contribu-

tors:  Willis Barnstone Original artist:  Sarah Handler

•   File:Restored_New_Testament_Cover_Photo.jpg   Source:    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Restored_New_

Testament_Cover_Photo.jpg License:  CC BY-SA 3.0  Contributors:   Photo sent to me by the author Willis Barnstone. The painting byMarc Chagall (The White Crucifixion) has been used for the cover of the authors book, The Restored New Testament.   Original artist: 

Willis Barnstone

•   File:Unbalanced_scales.svg Source:  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Unbalanced_scales.svg License:  Public do-main Contributors:  ?  Original artist:  ?

•   File:Willis-with-borges-001.jpg  Source:   https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Willis-with-borges-001.jpg   License: 

CC0 Contributors:  Template:Willis Barnstone Original artist:  Barnstone

7.3 Content license

•   Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0