Poet Robert Peterson dies

Renowned poet Robert Peterson, who was writer in residence at Reed from 1969 to 1971, died of cancer in September at age 76 at his home in Fairfax, California. The author of nine books of poetry and a widely anthologized poet, Peterson was one of the first artists to win a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts after its founding in 1965, and one of the first to edit an anthology of poems in opposition to the Vietnam War.

Pulitzer Prize­winning poet Carolyn Kizer said that he "possessed a faultless ear for the rythms of contemporary speech" and praised his "marvelously balanced lines." Writer Leonard Gardner said "His is a voice of man's comic nobility in the midst of slow disaster."

Peterson was born in Denver, but the greatest influence in his work was his childhood in San Francisco's Fielding Hotel, a Union Square hotel that his adoptive parents owned. "Growing up in the hallways and inner sanctums of the old hotel, watching the passing parade of gamblers, race-trackers, jazz musicians, boxers, and traveling salesman . . . he developed a keen idiosyncratic eye for human nature that would later give his poems their particular style and charm," said Joan Kloehn, his companion of 14 years.

After leaving Reed, Peterson lived in Taos, New Mexico, where he wrote a collection of poems, Leaving Taos, that was named a National Poetry Series selection in 1981. He then returned to the Bay Area, where he started his own publishing company, Black Dog Press, and created artworks that were shown in local galleries. He also served as writer in residence at Oregon's Willamette University from 1991 to 1992.

"If the great Japanese haiku poet Kobayashi Issa were to resurface. . . . he would take the name of Robert Peterson," said Oregon poet Clemens Starck.