Benjamin Saltman



Benjamin Saltman (September 7, 1927 - January 9, 1999) was an American poet and academic.

Youth
Saltman was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the youngest son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. He earned a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1952 and an M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University in 1959. In 1967 He received a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate School where he wrote his doctoral thesis, "The Descent to God: Religious Language in Several Contemporary American Poets".

Career
Saltman is the Professor of verse writing and contemporary American literature at California State University, Northridge.

He was noted as providing editorial assistance for the Swami Prabhavananda in the "The Sermon on the Mount according to Vedanta". In 1992, after retiring, he volunteered to teach at CSUN for free after state budget cuts caused the school to cancel 1,000 courses previously scheduled for the fall semester.

Recognition
Saltman was the recipient of two NEA Literature Fellowships in 1969 and 1987.

The Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award is given annually by Red Hen Press in his honor.

Publications

 * Blue with Blue (1968)
 * The Leaves, The People (1974)
 * Elegies of Place (1976)
 * Deck. Ithaca, NY: Ithaca House, 1979.
 * Five Poems (1989)
 * The Book of Moss (1992)
 * The Sun Takes Us Away (1996)
 * Sleep and Death, the Dream (1999)