Howard W. Robertson (September 19, 1947 - March 20, 2021) was a poet and fiction writer. He published ten books of poetry, three books of fiction, and a screenplay. His poems and stories were published in many literary journals and anthologies and won numerous awards.
He was born September 19, 1947 in Eugene, Oregon. He married Margaret Collins in 1991, and had two daughters, two sons, five grandsons, and a granddaughter. He received a B.A. in Russian and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon and an M.S. in Library Science from the University of Southern California. He was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and Phi Beta Kappa. Howard loved languages and the perspectives they offered, and read works in French, Spanish, Russian, German, Latin, and Greek.
He served as the Slavic Bibliographer at the University of Oregon Library during 1975-1993 and was the Director of the University of Oregon's Russian and East European Studies Center. After retirement he spent a year as a long-haul truck driver in the American West, from which a book of poetry grew. He was a past President of the Lane Literary Guild. He had been a full-time poet and fiction writer since 1993.
Howard was a brilliant and gifted poet who loved his family, all life, and the universe. His poetry spoke of the spirit in all things, of Gaia as a living, autopoietic system, and of the living creatures around us as our relatives. He was an angel temporarily on loan to the world, a rare and beautiful gift.
(Original obituary published by Eugene Register-Guard March 2021.)
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