Biographical note

Nathaniel Tarn was born in 1928 in Paris of British-Lithuanian and French-Rumanian parents, educated in France, Belgium and England, obtaining degrees from Cambridge, the Sorbonne and Chicago; he emigrated to the United States in 1970, where he taught at American universities until his retirement. He now lives near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Although he is perhaps best-known these days as a poet and essayist, he is also an anthropologist, with a particular interest in Highland Maya studies and the sociology of Buddhist institutions, and is a translator of the highest order (see above all his versions of Neruda and Segalen). His first collection of poetry was Old Savage/Young City (1964), which was followed the next year by his appearance in the seventh volume of the Penguin Modern Poets series. Three more collections followed in London, during which time he also became editor of the remarkable Cape Editions series of seminal modern texts: poetry, prose, anthropology, drama, many of them pioneering translations. He emigrated to the United States in 1970, after which only two more collections - the important volume A Nowhere for Vallejo and the ambitious book-length poem Lyrics for the Bride of God - were to appear in the UK. Thereafter, the majority of his work has appeared in the USA, most significantly: The House of Leaves, Atitlan/Alashka (with Janet Rodney), At the Western Gates, and Selected Poems 1950-2000. There is also an important volume of essays in Views from the Weaving Mountain. Tarn's work is remarkable for expansiveness and its willingness to absorb material from very disparate sources - in this, it owes something to the examples of Pound and Olson, but also much to the author's own anthropological training, his knowledge of other languages and his many interests.