Born in 1943 in New York City, Jonathan Greene graduated Barnard School (now part of Horace-Mann), Riverdale, New York, 1960; graduated Bard College 1965 with thesis on Hermann Broch, studied American Literature with Ralph Ellison. Studied poetry with Robert Lowell (at New York Writers Conference, 1961) and Folklore with Alan Dundes (University of California, 1963). Moved to Kentucky in 1966.
The author of 26 books (full size and chapbooks): The Reckoning, Matter Books, 1966; Instance, Buttonwood, 1968; The Lapidary, Black Sparrow, 1969; A 17th Century Garner, Buttonwood, 1969; Scaling the Walls, Gnomon, 1974; Glossary of the Everyday, Coach House, 1974; Peripatetics, Truck, 1978; Once a Kingdom Again, Sand Dollar, 1979; Quiet Goods Larkspur, 1980; Idylls, Iron Mountain, 1983; Small Change for the Long Haul, Station Hill, 1984; Trickster Tales, Coach House, 1985; Idylls, {Enlarged, revised, edition}, North Carolina Wesleyan, 1990; Les Chambres des Poètes, French Broad, 1990; The Man Came to Haul Stone, Dim Gray Bar, 1995; Of Moment, Gnomon, 1998, Inventions of Necessity, Gnomon, 1998, Incidents of Travels in Japan, Bookgirl Press, 1999; A Little Ink in the Paper Sea, Tangram, 2001; Book of Correspondences, tel-let, 2002; Watching Dewdrops Fall, Mountains & Rivers Press., 2003, Hummingbird’s Water Trough, Longhouse, 2003, Fault Lines, Broadstone 2004, On the Banks of Monks Pond, The Thomas Merton / Jonathan Greene Correspondence, Broadstone 2004, The Death of a Kentuicky Coffee-Tree & Other Poems, Longhouse, 2006, Gists Orts Shards, A Commonplace Book, Broadstone, 2006. Magazine publications include Origin, Poetry, Sulfur, American Voice, Quarterly Review of Literature, etc. and in a number of anthologies include: The American Literary Anthology, New Directions 20 and 34, The Gist of Origin, Active Anthology, Bookworms, What Book!?, Home, Clotheslines, etc. Plus essays and translations in such publications as The Merton Annual and Rural Japan (Smithsonian). Fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, Southern Federation of State Arts Agencies, and Kentucky Arts Council.
Readings at many colleges including: Cornell University, Indiana University, Bowling Green (Ohio), Bennington College, Poetry Center at San Francisco State, Mills College, University of Kentucky, etc.
Since 1965 Greene has edited and published over sixty books under the Gnomon Press imprint including works by Robert Duncan, Wendell Berry, Cid Corman, Jonathan Williams, James Still, Jim Wayne Miller, Robert Morgan, Gurney Norman, etc. He worked for The University Press of Kentucky as Designer & Production Mgr. from 1967-1976. He now does free-lance book design and has won a number of awards in this field.
