Leonard E. Nathan

Picture courtesy of Leonard Nathan, en.wikipedia.org

Leonard E. Nathan, (November 8 1924 – June 3, 2007) was an American poet, critic, and professor emeritus of rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley where he retired in 1991.

Among other honors, he received the National Institute of Arts and Letters prize for poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Phelan Award for Narrative Poetry, and three silver medals from the Commonwealth Club of California, including one for The Potato Eaters. His poems were also published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, New England Review and The Georgia Review, among other publications. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

Toast

There was a woman in Ithaca
who cried softly all night
in the next room and helpless
I fell in love with her under the blanket
of snow that settled on all the roofs
of the town, filling up