Clayton Eshleman

Clayton Eshleman (born June 1, 1935) is an American poet, translator, and editor, noted in particular for his translations of César Vallejo and his studies of cave painting and the Paleolithic imagination. Eshleman’s work has been awarded with the National Book Award for Translation, the Landon Translation prize from the Academy of American Poets (twice), a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Rockefeller Study Center residency in Bellagio, Italy, among other awards and honors.

Clayton Eshleman was born on June 1, 1935 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is the son of Ira Clayton Eshleman (1895-1971) and Gladys Maine (Spenser) Eshleman (1898-1970). The poet’s father was employed as a time-and-motion study efficiency engineer at Kingan and Company, a slaughterhouse and meat-packer. The family lived in the 1800 block of North Delaware Street. As a child the poet was forbidden from playing with children whose parents drink alcohol, with children of different races or religions, or whose mothers wear pants outside of the home.

Eshleman was exposed to the arts as a child through piano lessons and drawing classes focused on comic strips. In high school, Eshleman played football, ran track and wrestled. He worked as a lifeguard during the summer.

In 1951, Eshleman discovered jazz music, attracted in particular to the music of Bud Powell and Lennie Tristano. He began to spend time in jazz clubs and to play jazz alongside classical music. In 1953, Eshleman enrolled in Indiana University, majoring in music, but was not devoted to his studies. He pledged to the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. The hazing he endured during pledge week would become a significant topic in his poetry.

Pursuing his interest in jazz, Eshleman travelled to Los Angeles in the summer of 1954. He parked cars for a living and studied jazz piano with Marty Paitch and Richie Powell, the younger brother of Bud Powell. Returning to Indiana University in the fall, Eshleman changed his major to Business. His academic performance suffered. Put on academic probation for low grades, he was expelled for having too many parking tickets, but able to return to school the following year, this time as a Philosophy major.

Eshleman discovered poetry in creative writing classes at Indiana University. He studied 20th century American poetry with Samuel Yellin and Josephine Piercy. Jack and Ruth Hirschman who introduce him to world poetry in translation, including Federico Garcia Lorca, Vladimir Mayakofsky, Rainer Maria Rilke, and St.-John Perse. Mary Ellen Solt introduced him, via correspondence, to Louis Zukofksy, Robert Creeley, Cid Corman, as well as to poets closer to his own generation: Paul Blackburn, Robert Kelly, Jerome Rothenberg, Jackson Mac Low, and David Antin. Eshleman travelled frequently to New York City to meet with these poets in person. Through Paul Blackburn would meet William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, and Denise Levertov.

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