George Economou (USA)
1934-2019
George Economou was born on September 24, 1934, in Great Falls, Montana, to Amelia Ananiadis Economou and Demetrios George Economou, a businessman and rancher, both of whom emigrated to the United States from Greece. He died in 2019.
After primary and secondary school education in Great Falls, he attended Colgate University, where he majored in English, graduating cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1956. He earned an M.A. in English Literature at Columbia University in 1957 and a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature in 1967, specializing in Old and Middle English and continental literature.
Economou taught for 41 years at the Brooklyn Center of Long Island University (1961–83) and at the University of Oklahoma (1983–2000), where he served as Chair of the Department of English (1983–1990) and Director of Creative Writing (1990–2000).
The poet was a founding editor of The Chelsea Review (1957–60) and was a co-founding editor of Trobar and Trobar Books (1960–64) with fellow-poet Robert Kelly.
Beginning in 1968 with The Georgics Economou published many books of poetry, translations, and scholarly criticism. Among his poetry collections is Landed Natures (1969), Ameriki (1977), Voluntaries (1984), Century Dead Center and Other Poems (197) and Ananios of Kleitor (2009). Among Economou’s translations are Euripides, William Langland, and C. P. Cavafy. With Stavros Deligiorgis, he published Complete Plus: The Poems of C. P. Cavafy in English (Shearsman Books) in 2013, and that publisher will release his Finishing Cavafy's Unifinished and Selected Poems and Translations in 2015. He also edited Paul Blackblurn’s translation of The Poem of the Cid. Economou has lectured and given poetry readings at many universities and literary venues throughout the United States and abroad.
Economou received National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in 1988 and 1999, and a Rockefeller Bellagio Residence in 1993.
He was married to poet and playwright Rochelle Owens.
BOOKS OF POETRY
The Georgics (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow, 1968); Landed Natures (Los Angeles: Black Sprrow, 1969); Poems for Self-Therapy (Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin: Perishable Press, 1972); Ameriki: Book One, and Selected Earlier Poems (New York: Sun, 1977); Voluntaries (Iowa City: Corycian Press, 1984); harmonies and fits (Norman, Oklahoma: Point Riders Press, 1987); Nashvillanelle and Other Rimes (Ellsworth, Maine: Backwoods Broadsides Chaplets #16, 1996); Century Dead Center and Other Poems (Boulder, Colorado: Left Hand Books, 1997); Ananios of Kleitor (Bristol, United Kingdom: Shearsman Books, 2009)
For a selection of poems by Economou, go here: