Edmund Keeley


Edmund Leroy "Mike" Keeley was an American novelist, translator, and essayist, a poet, and Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English at Princeton University. He was a noted expert on the Greek poets C. P. Cavafy, George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis, and Yannis Ritsos, and on post-Second World War Greek history.

Life and career

Keeley was born in Damascus, Syria, on February 5, 1928, the son of the American diplomat James Hugh Keeley, Jr. and Mathilde Keeley, a homemaker. His brother was the diplomat Robert V. Keeley. He spent his childhood in Canada, Greece, and Washington, D.C., before earning his BA from Princeton University in 1949. In 1952 he received a doctorate in Comparative Literature from Oxford University where he studied with a fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
Keeley served twice as president of the Modern Greek Studies Association from 1970 to 1973 and 1980 to 1982, and as president of PEN American Center from 1992 to 1994. He retired from a long career of teaching English, creative writing, and Hellenic studies at Princeton University in 1994.
His fiction and non-fiction are often set in Greece, where he spent part of each year, but also in Europe and the Balkans, where he has frequently traveled, and in Thailand and Washington, D.C.. He lived with his wife Mary Stathato-Kyris in Princeton, New Jersey, from 1954 until her death in 2012. Keeley died from complications of a blood clot at his home in Princeton, New Jersey on February 23, 2022, at the age of 94.

Awards

  • 1959 Rome Prize American Academy of Arts and Letters
  • 1959 Guggenheim Fellowship
  • New Jersey Authors Award:
  • *1960 For the novel The Libation
  • *1968 For George Seferis: Collected Poems, 1924-1955
  • *1970 For the novel The Impostor
  • 1962 Guinness Poetry Award selection
  • 1972 Guggenheim Fellowship
  • 1973 National Book Award in Translation
  • 1975 P.E.N.-Columbia University Translation Center Prize
  • 1980 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, Academy of American Poets
  • 1982 Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities
  • 1983 PEN/National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Syndicate Award
  • 1984-85 Pushcart Prize Selection
  • 1987 First European Prize for Translation of Poetry
  • 1992 National Translation Award
  • 1994 Honorary Doctorate, University of Athens
  • 1999 Academy Award in Literature
  • 2000 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation
  • 2000 Criticos Prize, London Hellenic Society
  • 2001 Commander of the Order of the Phoenix
  • 2003 The Yale Review Prize
  • 2003 Trustees' Annual Award, Gennadius Library
  • 2004 Phidippides Award
  • 2006 Honorary Doctorate, Richard Stockton College
  • 2008 Dido Sotiriou Cultural Prize, Hellenic Authors' Society
  • 2008 Lord Byron Award, Hellenic College
  • 2010 Honorary Doctorate, University of Cyprus
  • 2014 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, for co-translator of Diaries of Exile by Yannis Ritsos

    Books

  • The Megabuilders of Queenston Park. Wild River Books. 2014.
  • Requiem for Mary. Greenhouse Review Press. 2015.
  • The Problem of Time and Other Poems. Greenhouse Review Press. 2018.

    Editor and translator

  • Six Poets of Modern Greece Alfred A. Knopf, 1961
  • Vassilis Vassilikos, 'The Plant,' 'The Well,' 'The Angel': A Trilogy Knopf, 1964.
  • Four Greek Poets Penguin Books, 1965
  • George Seferis, Collected Poems: 1924-1955 Princeton University Press, 1967 -
  • C. P. Cavafy, Passions and Ancient Days Hogarth Press, 1972
  • Modern Greek Writers: Solomos, Calvos, Matesis, Palamas, Cavafy, Kazantzakis, Seferis, Elytis Princeton University Press, 1972
  • C. P. Cavafy, Selected Poems Princeton University Press, 1972
  • Odysseus Elytis, The Axion Esti Pittsburgh University Press, 1972
  • C. P. Cavafy, Three Poems of Passion Plain Wrapper Press, 1975
  • C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems Princeton University Press, 1975, revised edition, Princeton University Press, 1992. -
  • Angelos Sikelianos, Selected Poems Princeton University Press, 1979
  • Odysseus Elytis, Selected Poems Viking-Penguin, 1981 -
  • The Dark Crystal: An Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry Denise Harvey & CO, 1981
  • Voices of Modern Greece: Selected Poems of C.P. Cavafy, Angelos Sikelianos, George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis, Nikos Gatsos Princeton University Press, 1981 -
  • Yannis Ritsos, Return and Other Poems Parallel Editions, 1983
  • C. P. Cavafy, A Selection of Poems Camberwell Press, 1985
  • Yannis Ritsos, Exile and Return: Selected Poems, 1967-74 Ecco Press, 1985
  • The Legacy of R.P. Blackmur: Essays, Memoirs, Texts Ecco Press, 1987
  • Yannis Ritsos: Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses Princeton University Press, 1991
  • The Essential Cavafy Ecco Press, 1995 -
  • George Seferis, Collected Poems, Princeton University Press, 1995
  • George Seferis and Edmund Keeley: Correspondence, 1951-1971 Princeton University Library, 1997
  • A Century of Greek Poetry 1900-2000: Bilingual Edition Cosmos Publishing, 2004 -
  • Selected Poems Of Odysseus Elytis Anvil Press, 2007
  • The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present W. W. Norton, 2009
  • ″Angelos Sikelianos: Selected Poems″,, second bilingual edition, Denise Harvey, 1996,