Poetry at Literati: Clayton Eshleman

Literati is please to welcome Clayton Eshleman back to the store in support of his new collection, Penetralia.

The world embraced by Eshleman’s poetry is our world. As a contemporary writer, Eshleman’s history is our own: his writing a record and reflection of our times. Eshleman’s story — the story revealed in his poetry — is the story of mid-America meeting the wider world; the story of social and political radicalism, of a counterculture raising a voice in poetry and in art; of the challenges, frustrations and anomie that befell that counterculture and of the continued and indeed on-going drama of empire and overreaching power, from Vietnam and El Salvador to Afghanistan and Iraq. Eshleman’s life in letters has exemplified a commitment to ceaseless, wide-ranging exploration and encounter: with other places, other people, other poetries — foreign and familiar —, other modes of thought and image. As he has written of his work: “I dream of poems that could change something essential / about the way a few people view creation…”

Clayton Eshleman has published roughly 100 books and chapbooks of original poetry, translations, and nonfiction writings, and edited seventy issues of magazines and journals, including the ground-breaking Caterpillar and Sulfur. He has published a translation of The Complete Poetry of Cesar Vallejo, for which he received the National Book Award, several collections of poetry by Aime Cesaire, a collection of poetry and prose from Antonin Artaud’s final period, as well as translations and co-translations of book by such poets as Vladimir Holan, Bernard Bador, Jose Antonio Mazzotti, Pablo Neruda, and Bei Dao. He has received two Landon Translation Prizes from the American Academy of Poets. His writings have appeared in over 500 literary magazines and journals around the world and his books and writings have been translated into a number of languages. It is undoubtedly unnecessary to observe that he made and has fulfilled a life commitment to poetry.