Cid Corman, 79; noted poet produced influential journal

TOKYO -- Cid Corman, a poet who celebrated unfashionable verse and whose magazine was considered one of the most influential among writers, died Friday, a colleague said yesterday.

Mr. Corman, 79, had been in a coma since having a heart attack on Dec. 31, said Chuck Sandy, a coeditor of an upcoming issue of Mr. Corman's poetry magazine, Origin.

A Roxbury native and former teacher at Tufts University, Mr. Corman had lived in Kyoto, Japan, for 30 years.

A prolific writer of poems, essays, translations, and letters since his teens, Mr. Corman recently produced a final version of his 750-poem series, "OF," which will soon be published.

In 1951, Mr. Corman started Origin, providing an outlet for foreign poems and helping establish emerging talents. Published irregularly and distributed by Longhouse, Publishers & Booksellers, in Vermont, the journal offered a stage for Black Mountain poets and introduced such writers as Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, and Theodore Enslin.

With his decades of experience in Japan, Mr. Corman also translated legendary Japanese haiku poet Basho Matsuo's "Back Roads to Far Towns: Basho's Oku-No-Hosomichi" and "One Man's Moon." Of his own work, "Sun Rock Man" and "Livingdying" were the best received. His recent works include "The Despairs," "Nothing Doing," and "And the Word."

Mr. Corman graduated from Boston Latin School and Tufts College. He did graduate work at the University of Michigan, where he won the Hopwood Award for Poetry, and the University of North Carolina.

Mr. Corman leaves his wife, Shizumi.