Featured Writer

Charles Guenther

I'd be remiss if I didn't start the Cornerstone Press website without honoring a friend of many years and a true gentleman in every sense of the word. Charles Guenther was an influence for many of us around the world. There are not enough words (in any language) that can be used to express what he has done to further poetry, translations, creative thought, and the written word over many years. Charles and his wife Esther always made me feel welcome in their home while discussing poetry or the state of literature in general.

Poet, critic, and essayist, he was known as one of the most prolific poetry translators for small presses. His work appeared in more than 300 different magazines worldwide, and in dozens of anthologies including: An Anthology of Spanish Poetry (Doubleday), The Contemporary World Poets (Harcourt), Gods and Mortals (Oxford), Modern European Poetry (Bantam), and Roots and Wings (Harper and Row). He was also the author of many books of poetry and translations. His long and varied career had encompassed professional civilian employment as a translator, historian, geographer, supervisory cartographer, and librarian for the U.S. Air Force, including assignment with Operation Crossroads; teaching at a half dozen colleges, and leading poetry workshops at many U. S. writers' conferences. A native of St. Louis, Charles Guenther had received a number of foreign honors including election to the Académie d'Alsace in 1957, and in 1973, the Italian Order of Merit. Among his other awards were several from the Poetry Society of America, in which he served 15 years as Midwest regional vice-president; and, in 2002, the Emmanuel Roblès International Award in Poetry. Below is but a small sampling of work completed during his life.

Poetry

Modern Italian Poets
Phrase/Paraphrase
Paul Valéry in English
Voices in the Dark
Jules Laforgue: Selected Poems
The Hippopotamus: Selected Translations, 1945-1985
Moving the Seasons: Selected Poems of Charles Guenther                                                     Man of My Time: New and Selected Translations
Rose of Fire: Poems of Antonio Machado
The Complete Love Sonnets of Garcilaso de la Vega
Three Faces of Autumn

Collaboration

Alain Bosquet: Selected Poems
(with Samuel Beckett and others)

Audio

Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature The Library of Congress