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Focusing on the five years Willis
Barnstone spent following his graduation
from Bowdoin College, the years of
living, thinking, and beginning to write
in France, Greece, Italy, Switzerland,
Spain, and England from 1948 to 1953,
this fascinating and moving memoir
nonetheless expands beyond those years.
On one side of that period are the poet
and translator's grandparents'
immigration to the United States, his
parents' stormy relationship and his
father's eventual suicide, his childhood
growing up in the building where Babe
Ruth lived, his first gestures toward a
life of poetry in Hawthorne's room at
Bowdoin, and his first acquaintance with
cultures other than his own while
digging privies in remote Indian
villages in Mexico during a year off
from college. On the other side of that
period are Barnstone's continuing life
as the gypsy scholar in China, Tibet,
Turkey, and Argentina and his continuing
friendship with his children and former
wife and the finest writers and artists
the world over.
Barnstone writes with elan of the
perfect apprenticeship for a poet-- a
half decade of vagabond adventure in
Paris, the Greek Islands, Andalusian
Spain, London, and many other romantic
spots in Europe and Morocco. His is the
life most young writers dream of living.
A poet always-even when writing prose-he
tells of times with the great poets and
writers of the period. A mere recitation
of the names will excite the literate.
Barnstone does far more than recite
names. Like Hemingway writing of the
1920s, he has written an elegantly
gripping "moveable feast" about an
entire generation of writers.
"This is the life story told in the
from of an episodic memoir of a scholar
gypsy making his way through the
countries of his heart's desire ...while
pausing to teach, particularly at
Indiana University, where in his 'cement
tower' he spins out poems, translations,
and his far-flung learning of the Bible,
literary theory, and Chinese poetry in
countless books. It is all a
high-spirited story full of literary and
erotic gossip, reminiscent of the
romantic 1920s, of a man of hope living
his life to the fullest."
--Edwin Honig, Brown University |
