For The Love Of Poetry And Sacred Texts with Willis Barnstone

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Willis Barnstone is a poet, translator, biblical scholar, memoirist, anthologist, teacher, and painter. If we are to grasp his greatest contribution to culture over the course of his professional life, we can focus on his role first and foremost as a poet – a lover of words, both his own and those of others, and on what he believes are sacred words from our earliest written records down to present day mystics and poets. What he is carrying across borders is no less than what his fellow poet Robert Bly calls “News of the Universe.” To read his bibliography is like reading the card catalog from the Ancient Alexandrian Library. He describes one of the oldest poems from the Bible, “Let there be Light,” and says that reading is like having a conversation with men and women of other centuries. (hosted by Phil Cousineau)

Bio

Willis Barnstone is a poet, translator, biblical scholar, memoirist, anthologist, teacher, and painter. He is a former O’Connor Professor of Greek at Colgate University, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, a Guggenheim Fellow, and winner of numerous literary awards, including the Emily Dickinson, Lannon, and W. H. Auden awards. In 2015 he was recipient of the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award. He is translator of the Greek Lyric Poets, a literary historical version of the New Testament, and poets as diverse as Sappho, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jorge Luis Borges, Antonio Machado, Wang Wei, and St. John of the Cross.

Barnstone’s life’s work includes over 75 books including:

• With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires: A Memoir (University of Illinois Press 1999)
• The Poems of Jesus Christ (W.W. Norton & Company 2012)
• Poetics of Ecstasy: Varieties of Ekstasis from Sappho to Borges (Holmes & Meier Pub 1983)
• The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice (Yale University Press 1995)
• Sappho and the Greek Lyric Poets (Pantheon 1988)
• The Other Bible (HarperOne 2005)
• The Apocalypse (editor, translator) (New Directions 2000)
• The Gnostic Bible (Shambhala 2009)
• The Restored New Testament: A New Translation with Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels Thomas, Mary, and Judas (W.W. Norton and Company 2009)
• A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now (editor with Aiki Barnstone) (Schocken1992)

To learn more about the work of Willis Barnstone go to www.willisbarnstone.org.

Topics Explored in This Dialogue

• What is the difference between writing poetry and writing prose
• Why reading is like having a conversation with men and women of other centuries
• How we have misread and misheard the words of Jesus
• What is best way to learn a language
• What makes a good translation of poetry from one language to another
• How the first woman, Eve, is the hero who brought us knowledge
• Why restoring the Latin, Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew names in the Bible are important
• A poem on Adam and Eve as they live the first morning of the globe
• His time spent with Jorge Borges
• How Jack Kerouac’s book On the Road was first written in French

Host: Phil Cousineau       Interview Date: 3/9/2015       Program Number: 3535

Music Playlist

From Album:  Classical Music for Contemplation
Artist:  various
https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Music-Contemplation-VARIOUS-ARTISTS/dp/B0000007YK

Opening Essay: Adagio from Cello Concerto in C - Gyorgy Kertesz
Music Break 1: Agnus Dei From Missa Papae Marcelli - Oxford Camerata/Jeremy Summerly
Music Break 2: Et In Terra From Gloria - Oxford Camerata/Jeremy Summerly
Music Break 3: In Paradisum From Requiem - Schola Cantorum Of Oxford/Jeremy Summerly