John Felstiner

John Felstiner (July 5, 1936 – February 24, 2017), was an American literary critic, translator, and poet. His interests included poetry in various languages, environmental and ecologic poems, literary translation, Vietnam era poetry and Holocaust studies. John Felstiner died in February 24, 2017 at the age of 80. He had been suffering from the effects of progressive aphasia at his time of death, at a hospice near Stanford.

Biography Felstiner was born in Mount Vernon, New York and grew up in New York and New England. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College, A.B. (magna cum laude), 1958, and Harvard University, Ph.D., 1965. Felstiner came to Stanford University in 1965 and was a professor of English at Stanford until his retirement in 2009. Felstiner is also known for writing, non academically but very movingly, of a former student of his, Elizabeth Wiltsee, in the late 60’s at Stanford. Pretty, precocious “Liz” Wiltsee had been a brilliant literature student, who declined into mental illness and homelessness, never fulfilling her great promise. She died around the age of 50, under mysterious circumstances.

John and his wife, the writer, historian and professor Mary Lowenthal Felstiner, have two children: Sarah and Alek, and also two grandchildren.

Selected works Max Beerbohm and the Wings of Henry James, 1967 The Lies of Art: Max Beerbohm's Parody and Caricature, 1972, Alfred A. Knopf, The Dark Room and Other Poems, by Enrique Lihn, co-translator John Felstiner New Directions, 1978, ASIN B002SMJFNG Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu, Stanford University Press, 1980, ‘Deep in the glowing text-void’: Translating Late Celan, Representations 32, 1990, Looking for Kafka, Stanford: Associates of the Stanford University Libraries, 1990, ASIN B002RYON96 Looking for Kafka, Stanford Magazine, Winter 1991 Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew, Yale University Press, 1995, Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology, Co-editor, W.W. Norton, 2000, Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan, editor and translator, W.W. Norton, 2001, this dust of words: Elizabeth Wiltsee, Stanford Magazine, Sept.- Oct. 2001 Paul Celan Meets Samuel Beckett, American Poetry Review, July - August 2004 Writing Zion: An Exchange between Celan and Amichai, The New Republic, 12 June 2006 'Lure of the God': Robert Duncan on Translating Rilke. (with David Goldstein), Jacket 31, October 2006 'Earth’s Most Graphic Transaction': The Syllables of Emily Dickinson, American Poetry Review, Mar.- Apr. 2007 Nature vs. Man: For Robinson Jeffers, it wasn’t even close, The Weekly Standard, 28 May 2007 'It looks just like the Cascades': Gary Snyder’s Eye for the Real World, Jacket 34, October 2007 [W. B. Yeats], The Weekly Standard, 22 September 2008 Modern Critical Views: Emily Dickinson, ed. Harold Bloom, Chelsea House Publications, 2008, Paul Celan and Yehuda Amichai: An Exchange on Nation and Exile, WORDS without BORDERS, 2008 'that witnessing presence': Life Illumined Around Denise Levertov, Jacket 36, 2008 The One and Only Circle: Paul Celan’s Letters to Gisèle, introduction and translation from the French by John Felstiner, Fiction 54, 2008 Can Poetry Save the Earth?: A Field Guide to Nature Poems, Yale University Press, 2009, ‘Deep in the time-crevasse’: Celan’s Outward and Inward Landscape, Free Verse: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry & Poetics, Summer 2010 John Felstiner on Paul Celan, Poetry Society of America The Post Natural World: An Interview with Gary Snyder, Poetry Foundation, John Felstiner: The Future We Want—Can Poetry Save the Earth, Rio+20 - United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Maverick translation, Jacket2, 21 November 2014 THE V-LETTER: A STORY SURVIVED, Michigan Quarterly Review, 10 December 2014

Selected honors and awards

First Kenyon Review Prize in Criticism, for Max Beerbohm and the Wings of Henry James (1967) National Endowment for the Arts Literature and Translation Fellowships (1969, 1971, 1984, 2002) Rockefeller (1980), Guggenheim (1983), and National Endowment for the Humanities (1971, 1989) fellowships, and Bellagio Center (Rockefeller Foundation) Residency (1996)