Gustaf Sobin (November 15, 1935 – July 7, 2005) was a U.S.-born poet and author who spent most of his adult life in France. Originally from Boston, Sobin attended the Choate School, Brown University, and moved to Paris in 1962. Eventually he settled in the village of Goult,

Provence Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the France–Italy border, Italian border ...

, where he remained for over forty years, publishing more than a dozen books of poetry, four novels, a children's story, and two compilations of essays.University of Arizona Poetry Center, Words Through: a Tribute to Gustaf Sobin
On the occasion of the publication of Sobin's ''Collected Poetry'' March 2010. This Bibliography was featured on this page. This tribute took place on Saturday, March 6, 2010, and featured Charles Alexander, Edward Foster, Andrew Joron, Tedi López Mills, Jeffrey Miller, Michael Palmer, Harris Sobin, and

Andrew Zawacki Andrew Zawacki (May 22, 1972) is an American poet, critic, editor, and translator. He was a 2016 Howard Foundation Fellow in Poetry. Zawacki's first book, ''By Reason of Breakings'', won the 2001 University of Georgia Contemporary Poetry Series, ...

Sobin maintained his expatriate status until his death in July, 2005 of

pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer arises when cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a mass. These cancerous cells have the ability to invade other parts of the body. A number of types of panc ...

at the age of 69.

Life and work

After studies with

René Char René Émile Char (; 14 June 1907 – 19 February 1988) was a French poet and member of the French Resistance. Biography Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of the four children of Emile ...

, Gustaf Sobin developed a poetic style that relies heavily on

assonance Assonance is a resemblance in the sounds of words/syllables either between their vowels (e.g., ''meat, bean'') or between their consonants (e.g., ''keep, cape''). However, assonance between consonants is generally called ''consonance'' in America ...

and

consonance In music, consonance and dissonance are categorizations of simultaneous or successive sounds. Within the Western tradition, some listeners associate consonance with sweetness, pleasantness, and acceptability, and dissonance with harshness, unpl ...

, as well as other methods of the sonic organization of speech. He published many books across different genres: fiction, essays, and translations (including a translation of

Henri Michaux Henri Michaux (; 24 May 1899 – 19 October 1984) was a Belgian-born French poet, writer and painter. Michaux is renowned for his strange, highly original poetry and prose, and also for his art: the Paris Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim ...

's ''Ideograms in China'', a prose poem about Chinese

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mo ...

). More recent translations include ''The Brittle Age'' and ''Returning Upland'', two volumes from Char's work of the mid to late 1960s that Sobin chose to translate in full, published posthumously in 2009, side by side with Char's French text. Among his many books are ''Breath's Burials'' (poetry, New Directions, 1995), ''Luminous Debris'' (1999) and ''Ladder of Shadows'' (2008) (essays, University of California Press), and ''Collected Poetry'' (2010). Among his works of fiction are the novels ''The Fly Truffler'' (about the art of

truffle A truffle is the Sporocarp (veggie), fruiting body of a subterranean ascomycete fungus, predominantly one of the many species of the genus ''Tuber (fungus), Tuber''. In addition to ''Tuber'', many other genera of fungi are classified as truf ...

-hunting in Southern France), and ''In Pursuit of a Vanishing Star'', which is a chronicle of a brief period of

Greta Garbo Greta Garbo (born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson; 18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) was a Swedish-American actress. Regarded as one of the greatest screen actresses, she was known for her melancholic, somber persona, her film portrayals of tragic c ...

's early acting career. Gustaf Sobin was survived by his wife, Susannah Bott, his daughter Esther, his son Gabriel, an older brother Harris (now deceased), of Phoenix, Arizona, and his devoted cousin, Mikki Ansin of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sobin's brother Harris, an architect and architectural historian, designed the rehabilitation of Gustaf Sobin's residence and two additions for a historic stone cocoonery in Provence, France. Before his death, Sobin named U.S. poets Andrew Joron and

as the co-executors of his literary estate.

Select bibliography

*''The Tale of the Yellow Triangle''. With illustrations by Jolaine Meyer and text by Gustaf Sobin. G. Braziller (1973). *Gustaf Sobin. A reading, February 7, 1996 in the Modern Languages Auditorium, sponsored by The University of Arizona Poetry Center. *''Ideograms in China''. Henri Michaux, translated from the French by Gustaf Sobin. New Directions (2002). *''The Brittle Age and Returning Upland''. Rene Char. Translated by Gustaf Sobin. Counterpath (2009). ;Poetry * ''Wind Chrysalid's Rattle''. Montemora Supplement NY, 1980. * ''Caesurae: Midsummer''. Blue Guitar Books/Shearsman Supplement, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 1981. * ''Celebration of the Sound Through''. Montemora Supplement, NY, 1982. * ''Carnets 1979-1982''. Shearsman Books, 1984. * ''Nile''. Oasis/Shearsman, London UK, 1984. * ''The Earth As Air''. New Directions, NY, 1984. * ''Miniatures''. (Cadmus Editions, San Francisco, 1986: 200 copies, privately distributed) * ''Voyaging Portraits''. New Directions, NY, 1988. * ''Blown Letters, Driven Alphabets''. Shearsman Books, Plymouth, UK, 1994. * ''Breath's Burials''. New Directions, NY, 1995. * ''By the Bias of Sound: Selected Poems 1974-1994''. Talisman House, Jersey City, NJ, 1995. * ''A World of Letters: Poems''. Arcturus Editions (1998). * ''Towards the Blanched Alphabets'' (Talisman House, 1998. 123pp, h/c & pb) * ''Articles of Light & Elation'' (Cadmus, 1998. 50pp) * ''In the Name of the Neither'' (Talisman House, 2002. 57pp, pb) * ''The Places as Preludes'' (Talisman House, 2005, 76pp, pb) * ''Collected Poems'' (Talisman House, 2010, 756pp, pb) ;Prose, fiction & essays *''Venus Blue'' (Bloomsbury, London, 1991, out of print) - novel *''Dark Mirrors'' (Bloomsbury, 1992, out of print) - novel *''The Fly-Truffler'' (Norton, New York, 1999) - novel *''Luminous Debris: Reflecting on Vestige in Provence and Languedoc'' (University of California Press, 1999. 247pp, pb) - essays *''In Pursuit of a Vanishing Star'' (Norton, NY, 2002) - novel *''Ladder of Shadows: Reflecting on Medieval Vestige in Provence and Languedoc'' (University of California Press, 2009. 208pp. pb, hc) - essays- companion volume to ''Luminous Debris'' *''Aura: Last Essays''. Counterpath, 2009.

References

External links

Obituary at Guardian Unlimited
features a comprehensive listing of books by Sobin

Edmund Hardy reviews ''The Places As Preludes'' on-line at " Jacket Magazine" (number 31 : October 2006)
I had an “aha moment” reading René Char’s "The Brittle Age and Returning Upland"

Ron Silliman Ron Silliman (born August 5, 1946) is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman w ...

's essay on Sobin's translations of two books of poetry by Sobin's friend and mentor Rene Char
Gustaf Sobin Archive
located at the Yale University's

Beinecke Library The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library () is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts. ...

* Gustaf Sobin Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. ;Multimedia, audio & video files
Words Through: A Tribute to Gustaf Sobin
video recordings from the panel celebrating the life and work of Gustaf Sobin on March 6, 2010 at the University of Arizona Poetry Center {{DEFAULTSORT:Sobin, Gustaf 1935 births 2005 deaths 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American male novelists Deaths from pancreatic cancer 20th-century American poets 21st-century American poets American male poets 20th-century American biographers 21st-century American biographers 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American male writers American male biographers