Stephen Mitchell (born 1943 in Brooklyn, New York) is a poet, translator, scholar, and anthologist. He is best known for his translations and adaptions of works including the Tao Te Ching , the Epic of Gilgamesh , works of Rainer Maria Rilke, and Christian texts. [1]
Stephen Mitchell was born to a Jewish family, educated at Amherst College, [2] the University of Paris, [2] and Yale University, [2] and "de-educated" through intensive Zen practice. [3] He studied for four and a half years with Zen master Seungsahn and for two and a half years with Robert Baker Aitken, Rōshi.
Mitchell's translations and adaptions include the Tao Te Ching , [4] which has sold over a million copies, Gilgamesh , [5] The Iliad , [1] [6] [7] [8] The Odyssey , [9] The Gospel According to Jesus, Bhagavad Gita , [10] The Book of Job , [11] The Second Book of the Tao, and The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke . He twice won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. His Selected Rilke has been called “the most beautiful group of poetic translations [the twentieth] century has produced” (Chicago Tribune), his Gilgamesh was runner-up for the first annual Quill award for poetry, and his Iliad was one of the New Yorker's Favorite Books of 2011.
He is also coauthor of three of his wife's bestselling books: Loving What Is, A Thousand Names for Joy, and A Mind at Home with Itself. His 2019 book, Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness , is a Zen-inflected midrash on the Joseph story from the Book of Genesis. The First Christmas is a reimagining of the Nativity story.
Mitchell is married to Byron Katie, founder and promoter of the self-inquiry method 'The Work.' [12]
The Tao Te Ching or Laozi is a Chinese classic text and foundational work of Taoism traditionally credited to the sage Laozi, though the text's authorship, date of composition and date of compilation are debated. The oldest excavated portion dates to the late 4th century BC.
The Tao or Dao is the natural way of the universe, primarily as conceived in East Asian philosophy and religion. This seeing of life cannot be grasped as a concept. Rather, it is seen through actual living experience of one's everyday being. The concept is represented by the Chinese character 道, which has meanings including 'way', 'path', 'road', and sometimes 'doctrine' or 'principle'.
The Mawangdui Silk Texts are Chinese philosophical and medical works written on silk which were discovered at the Mawangdui site in Changsha, Hunan, in 1973. They include some of the earliest attested manuscripts of existing texts, two copies of the Tao Te Ching, a copy of Zhan Guo Ce, works by Gan De and Shi Shen, and previously unknown medical texts such as Wushi'er Bingfang. Scholars arranged them into 28 types of silk books. Their approximately 120,000 words cover military strategy, mathematics, cartography, and the six classical arts: ritual, music, archery, horsemanship, writing, and arithmetic.
Nonattachment, non-attachment, or detachment is a state in which a person overcomes their emotional attachment to or desire for things, people, or worldly concerns and thus attains a heightened perspective. It is considered a wise virtue and is promoted in various Eastern religions, such as Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism, and Buddhism. It is also a key concept in Christian spirituality, where it signifies a detachment from worldly objects and concerns.
Stanley F. "Stan" Lombardo is an American Classicist, and former professor of Classics at the University of Kansas.
Lesléa Newman is an American author, editor, and feminist best known for the children's book Heather Has Two Mommies. Four of her young adult novels have been finalists for the Lambda Literary Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature, making her one of the most celebrated authors in the category.
Wang Bi, courtesy name Fusi, was a Chinese philosopher and politician. During his brief career he produced commentaries on the Tao Te Ching and I Ching which were highly influential in Chinese philosophy.
Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons (2003) is the first book in the Ologies series, written by Dugald Steer and created and published by The Templar Publishing Company in the UK, and published by Candlewick Press in North America.
Byron Kathleen Mitchell, better known as Byron Katie, is an American speaker and author who teaches a method of self-inquiry known as "The Work of Byron Katie" or simply as "The Work". She is the founder of Byron Katie International, an organization that includes the School for the Work and Turnaround House in Ojai, California. Time magazine describes her as "a spiritual innovator for the 21st century."
The Duino Elegies are a collection of ten elegies written by the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He was then "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", and began the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis at Duino Castle on the Adriatic Sea. The poems were dedicated to the Princess upon their publication in 1923. During this ten-year period, the elegies languished incomplete for long stretches of time as Rilke had frequent bouts with severe depression—some of which were related to the events of World War I and being conscripted into military service. Aside from brief periods of writing in 1913 and 1915, he did not return to the work until a few years after the war ended. With a sudden, renewed burst of frantic writing which he described as a "boundless storm, a hurricane of the spirit"—he completed the collection in February 1922 while staying at Château de Muzot in Veyras, Switzerland. After their publication in 1923, the Duino Elegies were soon recognized as his most important work.
Cynthia Leitich Smith is a New York Times best-selling author of fiction for children and young adults.
Edward A. Snow is an American poet and translator.
Translators and scholars have translated the main works attributed to Homer, the Iliad and Odyssey, from the Homeric Greek into English since the 16th and 17th centuries. Translations are ordered chronologically by date of first publication, with first lines provided to illustrate the style of the translation.
Marilyn Nelson is an American poet, translator, biographer, and children's book author. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, and the former Poet Laureate of Connecticut. She is a winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and the Frost Medal. From 1978 to 1994, she published under the name Marilyn Nelson Waniek. She is the author or translator of more than twenty books and five chapbooks of poetry for adults and children. While most of her work deals with historical subjects, in 2014 she published a memoir, named one of NPR's Best Books of 2014, entitled How I Discovered Poetry.
David Ellwand is an English photographer, illustrator, and author. He is a trained photographer, who has exhibited his landscape and abstract photographs throughout western Europe and the United States.
Eugene Yelchin is a Russian-American artist best known as an illustrator and writer of books for children.
Vladimir Radunsky was a Russian-born American artist, designer, author and illustrator who lived in Rome.
June Crebbin is a British writer for children based in Leicestershire. After she took early retirement as a primary school teacher, she wrote and published over 40 books.
Ron Koertge is an American poet and author of young adult fiction. Koertge is currently the Poet Laureate of South Pasadena, California. Koertge's honors include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a California Arts Council grant, and inclusion in numerous anthologies. His young-adult fiction has won many awards, including Friends of American Writers Young People’s Literature Award, New York Library’s 100 Best Children’s Books, ALA Best Book, New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age, and P.E.N. awards. In 2017, he was awarded a Pushcart Prize.