Education: University of Helsinki, Finland University of Tübingen, Germany
Year Started Teaching at Naropa: Summer Writing Programs from mid-Seventies; fulltime core faculty since 1989
Teaching Philosophy: A lifelong associate of the Beat, Black Mountain, New York (I and II), and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E schools of U.S. American Poetry (and a founding member of the more esoteric "schools"of Actualism and Continualism), I hope to convey to younger writers the amazing variety and strength of the writing (both poetry and prose) that has emerged from those quarters in the past fifty-odd years. This body of work represents the United States' true contribution to modern and postmodern world literature, and it exists, to this day, in glorious independence from what poet/essayist Charles Bernstein has called the "official verse culture."My aim is to acquaint younger writers with this vigorous, multifarious, rhizomic tradition of U.S. American writing. I also hope to demonstrate the multi- and cross-cultural connections that have influenced it, in classes examining twentieth century European poetry and French poetry in particular ("Looking through French Windows"), and in my translation workshop (of particular interest to young writers choosing our Translation Concentration.)
In my graduate and undergraduate poetry workshops we focus on the participants' own poems, their intentions and realizations, triumphs, disappointments, and creative mistakes. The translation workshop is based on the idea that "translation" equals "transformation". How do the choices we make in vocabulary, style, conceptual approach, when we write anything at all, "translate our thoughts into words," affect the result? How do we know that the literature in translation we read is an "accurate" reflection of the original (and is there such a thing?)? Can translated literature ever reach the aesthetic and emotional immediacy of texts we are able to read in their original (or "our") language? These are just a few of the questions we' examine, while also attempting to create our own translations, either from languages we know (to whatever extent), or from one kind of English to another.
Reading is as much of an art as writing. They are, in fact, vitally complementary. It has been said that no one can teach anyone to become a great writer, but it is certainly possible to show someone how to become a better reader, and developing an array of reading strategies helps us develop our own writing in innovative ways.
Research Interest: In addition to my own writing (poetry and essays), I have also practiced literary translation for almost half a century. Past (and published) translations include poems by Blaise Cendrars, Pierre Reverdy, Pablo Picasso (French), Paul Klee, Friederike Mayröcker, Ernst Jandl (German), Gunnar Harding (Swedish), Paavo Haavikko, Pentti Saarikoski, Kai Nieminen (Finnish); novels by Jean Genet (French), Franz Innerhofer (German), Lennart Hagerfors (Swedish), Antti Tuuri (Finnish); screenplays by Louis Malle and Francois Truffaut (French); plays by Bertolt Brecht (German); biographies by Olof Lagercrantz (his biography of August Strindberg; Swedish) and Peter S. Jungk (his biography of Franz Werfel; German). I have also edited and translated anthologies of contemporary Swedish and Finnish poetry. My own work has been translated into French, German, Swedish, Hungarian, and Finnish.
Professional Background: Working life: 1952-1958, freelance literary journalist and private secretary to chemist Paul Walden, my maternal grandfather, in Southwest Germany. Travels and sojourns in Austria and Spain. 1958-1966, Programme Assistant and Producer for the BBC European Services, Bush House, London. With various writing and reading departments of U.S. institutions of learning since 1967, ranging from the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Iowa Writers' Workshop to Sweet Briar College in Virginia. Since 1989, a faculty member of the Writing & Poetics department and its MFA Program (The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics) at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
Professional Activities: Numerous poetry readings, lectures, panel discussions at universities, colleges, literary centers and conferences across the United States and the United Kingdom.
