Tony Barnstone, a poet, literary critic, and translator, has authored twenty-four books,
including poetry collections, anthologies, textbooks and multimedia work, including both a
compact disc of music based on his poetry and a tarot deck, The Radiant Tarot: Pathway to
Creativity, with artist Alexandra Eldridge, which draws upon the neuroscience of creativity to
turn the tarot into a tool for creativity both in the arts and in reinventing one’s life. He is
currently working on a libretto for an opera. His twenty-fifth book, The Cyborg Modernism of
William Carlos Williams: Technoscience, the Arts, and the Biomechanical Muse, a wide-ranging
interdisciplinary study of Williams in the context of the history and philosophy of science, will
appear in late 2025 with Bloombury Academic.
Barnstone’s poetry collections include Apocryphal Poems (Nirala Press, 2024); Pulp
Sonnets (Tupelo Press, 2015), illustrated by fellow poet and professor Amin Mansouri; Beast in
the Apartment (Sheep Meadow Press, 2014); Tongue of War (BKMK Press, 2009); The Golem of
Los Angeles (Red Hen Press, 2008); Sad Jazz: Sonnets (Sheep Meadow Press, 2005);
and Impure: Poems (University Press of Florida, 1999). His selected poetry collection, Buda en
Llamas: Antología Poética [Buddha in Flames: Poetry Anthology] (1999–2012) appeared in a
bilingual Spanish-English edition published by Ediciones El Tucán de Virginia in 2014, with
translations by Mariano Zaro.
Barnstone has edited and coedited the following anthologies: Republic of Apples, Democracy of
Oranges: New Eco-Poetry from China and the United States (University of Hawaii Press,
2019), coedited with Frank Stewart and Ming Di; as well as Human and Inhuman Monster
Poems (2015) and Poems Dead and Undead (2014), both coedited with Michelle Mitchell-Foust
and published by Everyman Pocket Library.
He has published seven works of translation, such as Faces Hidden in the Dust: Selected Ghazals
of Ghalib (White Pine Press, 2021), co-translated with Bilal Shaw; Erotic Chinese
Poems (Everyman Press, 2007) and The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry (Anchor Books, 2005),
both of which were coedited with Chou Ping.
Barnstone has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and the California Arts Council. He has also been awarded the
Poets’ Prize, the Grand Prize of the Strokestown International Poetry Festival in Ireland, the
Pushcart Prize in Poetry, the Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry, and the John Ciardi Prize in Poetry.
Barnstone is a professor of literature and creative writing at Whittier College.