Peter O'Leary sent this note today:
"The truly terrific Chicago poet Ralph J. Mills, Jr. passed away over the weekend. Here's a link to his obituary in the Tribune today. And here's a link to the small tribute page Tom Raworth has set up for Ralph on his website. (Tom lived in Chicago for a brief period, where he got to know Ralph.) Ralph - whom we published in LVNG several times - was a real inheritor of the Objectivist line & spirit."
Also, here's a link to Bookslut on Mills' book Essays on Poetry.
August Kleinzahler turned me onto his work back in the mid eighties. I remember taking a volume of his poems with me to Spain in 1987 and marveling at the delicate poems, whose settings seem to be almost exclusively the flora of his back yard. I haven't thought of him in years, until now.
Dr. Mills was a beloved professor, mentor, and advisor to me and many other young poets. He taught how there was beauty in less, in the simple, and how such delicacy could lead to the divine. He will be sorely missed.
54th Annual Poetry Day: Louise Glück
