George Franklin

George Franklin spent his youth studying (mostly Western) literature at Harvard, Brown, and Columbia, and his middle years studying (mostly Eastern) spiritual traditions in the United States and abroad. Throughout his life, he wrote constantly, prmarily poetry, but deeply averse to self-promotion, published only intermittently. Although subject to bouts of severe depression, he had long periods of joyful engagement with the world around him and with a wide circle of friends and family. Gay but largely celibate for the sake of his spiritual practice, he never married. During his final years, suffering from multiple debilitating illnesses that consigned him to a nursing home, he rose daily before dawn to produce a series of astonishingly virtuosic books of poetry, memoir and literary criticism. He died at the age of 71, leaving behind a triumphant legacy in the form of his writing.