Iowa poet Robert Dana dies

Former Iowa poet laureate Robert Dana died this weekend. The 80-year-old Dana had been battling pancreatic cancer. Still, he was writing up until the end. His most recent book, The Other, came out in 2009, and despite dealing with writer’s block after its release, he was still working.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dana at his Coralville home in early 2009 for an article about the release of that book. As I wrote, you can stand at the back window of Dana’s home, look into the ravine that serves as his backyard, and see the subject matter of many of his poems.

“People are surprised — it’s all right there,” Dana told me. “The longer you live in a place, the more it feeds you. The more it shows you what’s there.”

He knew Iowa, and documented it as well as any other poet, of his generation or any other. His contributions to poetry, and to the state, were invaluable. He taught at Cornell College in Mount Vernon for 40 years, and resurrected the North American Review literary journal.

Thanks to his generosity, I have gathered a small library of his work, and enjoyed watching as he evolved late in life from formal verse to freer, more playful (and, frankly, incisive) forms. The next I’ll acquire is New & Selected Poems: 1955 to 2010 from Anhinga Press. It’s about time Dana’s work has been collected, and it will serve as a fitting tribute to a poet who never stopped reaching.

“I don’t want to be a poet who repeats himself. It’s another reason I keep moving on, lighting out for the territory,” he said last year. “What do you do when you run out of territory?”