Ben Belitt



Ben Belitt (born New York, May 2, 1911 - Bennington, Vermont, August 17, 2003) was an American poet and translator.

Life
Sam Belitt was born in New York City. He was educated at the University of Virginia, receiving a B.A. in 1932 and an M.A. in 1934, and he was a doctoral student at that university from 1934 to 1936. By the early 1940s he had taken up an appointment at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, where he remained for the rest of his life. A bachelor, he became a good friend of the dancer (and fellow teacher at Bennington) Bill Bales, of his wife, the actress Jo Van Fleet, and of their son, Michael Bales, and regularly spent the important holidays of the year with this family at Bennington or in New York City.

Career
Belitt was the author of eight books of poems; his complete poems, This Scribe, My Hand, was published in 1998 by Louisiana State University Press. He also translated several books of poetry by Pablo Neruda and Federico García Lorca from Spanish to English. He wrote two books of essays and over thirteen books of translations.

He taught for many decades at Bennington College. After retiring from Bennington College, he continued to live in North Bennington and held the position of Professor Emeritus of Language and Literature at the college. He died in Bennington on August 17, 2003, at the age of 92 and was buried in Manchester, Vermont.

His papers are held by the University of Virginia.

Recognition
Belitt shared the Shelley Memorial Award for Poetry for 1936-1937 with Charlotte Wilder.

The 1962 ballet A Look at Lightning, by the American choreographer Martha Graham, was titled after a poem by Belitt. Errand into the Maze, also by Graham, takes its title from a Belitt poem as well.

As author

 * Belitt, Ben (1955). Wilderness Stair: Poems 1938-1954. New York: Grove Press.
 * Belitt, Ben (1998). This scribe, my hand: The Complete Poems of Ben Belitt. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0-8071-2324-2. ISBN 0-8071-2323-4.

As translator

 * García Lorca, Federico (1963). Joy of the Day
 * García Lorca, Federico (1964). Ode to Salvador
 * Neruda, Pablo (1961). Selected Poems Edited and translated by Ben Belitt. Introduction by Luis Monguio.
 * Neruda, Pablo (1963). Poems for the Mind

Recordings

 * c. 1965 - Belitt, Ben. The Poetry of Ben Belitt. Recorded at the Poetry Center of the New York YM-YWHA in November 1965. Audio cassette. Audio Forum series. New York: Jeffrey Norton.