Nathan, Leonard 1924–2007
Nathan, Leonard 1924–2007
(Leonard E. Nathan, Leonard Edward Nathan)
OBITUARY NOTICE—
See index for CA sketch: Born November 8, 1924, in Los Angeles, CA; died of complications from Alzheimer's disease, June 10, 2007. Poet, literary critic, translator, educator, and author. Nathan once described himself to CA as "a poet in search of a saving grace." The search consumed him for decades and resulted in more than a dozen collections of his work. Nathan was nominated for a National Book Award in 1975 for Returning Your Call. His fellowship at the American Institute of Indian Studies in the 1960s inspired The Likeness: Poems out of India (1975). Nathan was a lifelong poet. For more than thirty years he was also a teacher of rhetoric at the University of California in Berkeley, retiring as a professor emeritus in 1991. He wrote a few works of literary criticism and through his translations introduced English-speaking readers to the poetry of Ramprasad Sen, Gunnar Ekelof, Anna Swit, and Aleksander Wat. As a translator he sometimes collaborated with poet Czeslaw Milosz, whose work he also introduced to a Western audience. Nathan's later poetry collections include The Potato Eaters (1999), Tears of the Old Magician (2003), and Restarting the World (2006).
OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2007, p. B11