The Literary Life with Willis Barnstone

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. 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.

Host: Phil Cousineau       Interview Date: 3/9/2015        Program Number: C0331 

More from Willis Barnstone

A full one-hour New Dimensions program on this subject is available for purchase and download:

 For The Love Of Poetry And Sacred Texts with Willis Barnstone