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The author of 17 volumes of poetry, Nathan was has been described as "a fixture for 50 years in literary circles both on and off the UC Berkeley campus." Ted Kooser, a recent U.S. poet laureate and an English professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, counted Nathan among his mentors, particularly for his "economy of words."

"He was among the finest poets of his generation and will be missed by all of us who practice the art", said Kooser, who struck up a correspondence with Nathan in the 1970s after complimenting Nathan on a poem he had seen in a magazine.

Nathan's first book of poems, Western Reaches, brims with images of the California landscape. After a year in India, he published a book about his experiences there titled, The Likeness: Poems out of India. That same year, Princeton University Press published Nathan's Returning Your Call, which was nominated for a National Book Award.

His prose included Diary of a Left-Handed Bird Watcher and The Poet's Work, an Introduction to Czes?aw Mi?osz. He also collaborated on a number of translations, most notably with Milosz on the poems of Anna Swir and Aleksander Wat.

Nathan died in Marin, California in 2007.

• Western Reaches (Talisman Press, 1958)
• Glad and Sorry Seasons (Random House, 1964)
• The Tragic Drama of William Butler Yeats: Figures in a Dance (Columbia University Press, 1965)
• The Matchmaker's Lament (Gehenna Press, 1967)
• The Day the Perfect Speakers Left (Wesleyan University Press, 1969)
• Flight Plan (Cedar Hill Press, 1971)
• First Person, Second Person, A Selection from the Work of "Agyeya" (translation with Sachchidananda) (University of California, 1971)

• The Likeness: Poems out of India (Thorpe Springs Press, 1975)
• Returning Your Call (Princeton University Press, 1975)
• Teachings of Grandfather Fox (Serendipity Books Distribution, 1976)
• The Transport of Love: K?lid?sa's The M?ghad?a (University of California Press, 1977)

• Dear Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980)
• Holding Patterns (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982)
• Songs of Something Else: Poems of Gunnar Eklöf (translation with James Larson) (Princeton University Press, 1982)
• Carrying On: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985)
• With the Skin: Poems of Aleksander Wat (translation with Czes?aw Mi?osz) (Ecco, 1989)
• The Poet's Work, an Introduction to Czes?aw Mi?osz (Harvard University Press, 1991)
• Talking to My Body: Poems of Anna Swir (translation with Czes?aw Mi?osz) (Copper Canyon Press, 1996)
• Diary of a Left-Handed Birdwatcher (Graywolf Press, 1996)
• Captain of the Butterflies: Poems by Cees Nooteboom (translation with Herlinde Spahr) (Sun and Moon Press, 1997)
• The Potato Eaters (Orchises Press, 1998)
• Grace and Mercy in Her Wild Hair: Poems of R?mpras?d Sen (translation with Clinton Seely) (Hohm Press, 1999)
• Tears of the Old Magician (Orchises Press, 2003)
• Restarting the World (Orchises Press, 2006)
• Ragged Sonnets (Orchises Press, 2008)

Leonard Nathan