He was born in Indianapolis in 1935. In college he became interested in world poetry, and learned Spanish in order to read and translate the works of Cesar Vallejo and Pablo Neruda and to . He first wrote to Merton while in Kyoto where he was teaching English, responding to a letter of Merton's printed in El Corno Emplumado. Later, he met Merton after having returned to Indiana as a professor at University of Indiana. He came for a visit with his wife on April 23, 1965. Eshleman was not very happy in Indiana and moved to Peru later in 1965. Some unfortunate events happened in Peru and he would only stay there a year; however, he became very socially involved after having witness the slums of Lima. He then moved to New York and founded the literary magazine Caterpillar in 1967. (Source: "A Brief Biography and Complete CV". Clayton Eshleman website. Accessed 2004/12/06. ‹http://www.claytoneshleman.com/bio.html›.)