He attended Boston Latin School and in 1941 he entered Tufts University, where he achieved Phi Beta Kappa honours and wrote his first poems.
Corman studied for his Master's degree at the University of Michigan, where he won the Hopwood poetry award,[2] but dropped out two credits short of completion.
After a brief stint at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he spent some time travelling around the United States, returning to Boston in 1948.
The magazine also led to the establishment of Origin Press, which published books by a similar range of poets as well as by Corman himself and which remains currently active.
In 1954, Corman won a Fulbright Fellowship grant (with an endorsement from Marianne Moore)[2] and moved to France, where he studied for a time at the Sorbonne.
By this time, Corman had published a number of small books, but his Italian experiences were to provide the materials for his first major work, Sun Rock Man (1962).
But they also digressed into other shared enthusiasms: in my case his love of baseball and sumo wrestling, and often into the difficulties of making a living in expensive Japan.
His translations (or co-translations) include Bashō's Back Roads to Far Towns, Things by Francis Ponge, poems by Paul Celan and collections of haiku.
Cid Corman did not speak, read, or write Japanese, even though his co-translation with Susumu Kamaike of Bashō's Oku No Hosomichi (see above) is considered to be one of the most accurate in tone in the English language.
One of Corman's last appearances in the United States was at the 2003 centennial symposium and celebration in southern Wisconsin that honored his friend and fellow poet, Lorine Niedecker.
At the time, Corman spoke warmly about his connection to the Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin poet (playing the only known audio tape of Niedecker reading from her works).