Peter Wild

Peter T. Wild (April 25, 1940 – February 23, 2009) was a poet, historian, and professor of English at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. Born in Northampton, Massachusetts, he grew up in and graduated from high school in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

Wild worked as a rancher and firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service, and served as a lieutenant with the U.S. Army in Germany. Wild earned his M.F.A. in 1969 from the University of California, Irvine. He then began teaching for nearly 40 years and wrote over 2,000 poems; also, he edited or wrote some 80 fiction and non-fiction books, largely dealing with the American West.

His 1973 volume of poetry, Cochise, a eulogy to the Chiricahua Apache Indians and their leader Cochise, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.