Robert Dana was born in Boston in 1929. After serving in the South Pacific at the end of World War II, he moved to Iowa where he attended Drake University and The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. His poetry has won several awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and The Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University. Retired from teaching after forty years as Poet-in-Residence at Cornell College, he served as Distinguished Visiting Writer at Stockholm University and at several American colleges and universities. Dana was named Poet Laureate for the state of Iowa. He passed away in 2010.
