Peterson, Robert

Biography

The author of nine books and a widely anthologized poet, Robert Peterson was born in Denver in 1924. His childhood was spent in San Francisco at the Fielding Hotel, a Union Square hotel owned by his adoptive parents. There he developed a sharp idiosyncratic eye for human nature that would later give his poems their particular style and charm. He was writer-in-residence at Reed College, Portland Oregon from 1969-1971. After leaving Reed College, 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 a writer-in-residence at Oregon's Willamette University from 1991-1992. 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 anthrology of poems in opposition to the Vietnam War.

Robert Peterson died of cancer in September 2001 at the age of 76.