Vern Rutsala (February 5, 1934 – April 2, 2014) was an American

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

. Born in

McCall, Idaho McCall is a resort town on the western edge of Valley County, Idaho, United States. Named after its founder, Tom McCall, it is situated on the southern shore of Payette Lake, near the center of the Payette National Forest. The population was 2,991 ...

, he was educated at

Reed College Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...

(B.A.) and the

Iowa Writers' Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative W ...

(M.F.A.). He taught English and creative writing at

Lewis & Clark College Lewis & Clark College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Originally chartered in 1867 as the Albany Collegiate Institute in Albany, Oregon, the college was relocated to Portland in 1938 and in 1942 adopted the name Lewis & Cl ...

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

for more than forty years, before retiring in 2004. He also taught for short periods at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

Bowling Green State University Bowling Green State University (BGSU) is a public research university in Bowling Green, Ohio. The main academic and residential campus is south of Toledo, Ohio. The university has nationally recognized programs and research facilities in the ...

University of Redlands The University of Redlands is a private university headquartered in Redlands, California. The university's main, residential campus is situated on 160 acres (65 ha) near downtown Redlands. An additional eight regional locations throughout Califo ...

, and the

University of Idaho The University of Idaho (U of I, or UIdaho) is a public land-grant research university in Moscow, Idaho. It is the state's land-grant and primary research university,, and the lead university in the Idaho Space Grant Consortium. The Universit ...

, and served in the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

, 1956–58. He died in Oregon on April 2, 2014.

Books

*''The Window'' (1964) *''Small Songs: A Sequence, Stone Wall Press'' (1969) *''The Harmful State'' (1971) *''Laments'' (1975) *''The Journey Begins'' (1976) *''Paragraphs'' (1978) *''The New Life'' (1978) *''Walking Home from the Icehouse'' (1981) *''The Mystery of the Lost Shoes'' (1985) *''Backtracking'' (1985) *''Ruined Cities'' (1987) *''Selected Poems'' (1991) *''Little-known Sports'' (1994) *''The Moment's Equation'' (2004) *''A Handbook for Writers: New and Selected Prose Poems'' (2004) *''How We Spent Our Time'' (2006) *''The Long Haul'' (2015)

Awards

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

fellowships (1974, 1979) *Northwest Poets Prize (1975) *

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

(1982) *Carolyn Kizer Poetry Prize (1988) *Masters Fellowship from the

Oregon Arts Commission The Oregon Arts Commission is a governor-appointed body of nine commissioners who allocate grants for artists based in the U.S. state of Oregon. It receives the bulk of its funding through the National Endowment for the Arts, the state, and the Or ...

(1990) *

Oregon Book Award The Oregon Book Awards are presented annually by Literary Arts to honor the "state’s finest accomplishments by Oregon writers who work in genres of poetry, fiction, graphic literature, drama, literary nonfiction, and literature for young readers ...

(1992) *Juniper Prize (1994) *Richard Snyder Prize (2003) *finalist,

National Book Award for Poetry The National Book Award for Poetry is one of five annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by US citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers".

(2005)

Notes

References

Vern Rutsala
at Lewis & Clark College archives

in ''Reed Magazine'', with audio clips 1934 births 2014 deaths American male poets University of Iowa alumni University of Idaho faculty Writers from Portland, Oregon Reed College alumni Lewis & Clark College faculty People from McCall, Idaho Poets from Idaho 20th-century American poets Poets from Oregon 21st-century American poets National Endowment for the Arts Fellows 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American male writers {{Oregon-bio-stub