David Wagoner

David Russell Wagoner (June 5, 1926 – December 18, 2021) was an American poet, novelist, and educator.

Biography David Russell Wagoner was born on June 5, 1926, in Massillon, Ohio. Raised in Whiting, Indiana, from the age of seven, Wagoner attended Pennsylvania State University where he was a member of Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps and graduated in three years. He received a Master of Arts in English from the Indiana University Bloomington in 1949 and had a long association with the University of Washington where he taught, beginning in 1954, on the suggestion of friend and fellow poet Theodore Roethke.

Wagoner was editor of Poetry Northwest from 1966 to 2002. He was elected chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1978 One of his novels, The Escape Artist, was turned into a film by executive producer Francis Ford Coppola.

Wagoner was Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington,

Poetry and recognition The natural environment of the Pacific Northwest was the subject of much of David Wagoner's poetry. He cited his move from the Midwest as a defining moment: "hen I came over the Cascades and down into the coastal rainforest for the first time in the fall of 1954, it was a big event for me, it was a real crossing of a threshold, a real change of consciousness. Nothing was ever the same again." First Class: A Play About Theodore Roethke (2007).