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

David Russell Wagoner was born on June 5, 1926, inMassillon, Ohio.^[1] Raised inWhiting, Indiana, from the age of seven, Wagoner attendedPennsylvania State University where he was a member ofNaval Reserve Officers Training Corps and graduated in three years.^[2] He received aMaster of Arts in English from theIndiana University Bloomington in 1949^[3] and had a long association with theUniversity of Washington where he taught, beginning in 1954, on the suggestion of friend and fellow poetTheodore Roethke.^[4]

Wagoner was editor ofPoetry Northwest from 1966 to 2002.^[5] He was elected chancellor of theAcademy of American Poets in 1978^[4] and served in that capacity until 1999.^[6] One of his novels,The Escape Artist, was turned into a film by executive producerFrancis Ford Coppola.^[7]

Wagoner was Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington,^[5] but after his retirement from full-time university teaching, Wagoner continued to lecture and teach in various workshop and low-residency writing programs, including theHugo House and the MFA program of theNorthwest Institute of Literary Arts onWhidbey Island.^[8]

The natural environment of thePacific Northwest was the subject of much of David Wagoner's poetry. He cited his move from the Midwest as a defining moment: "[W]hen I came over theCascades and down into thecoastal 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."^[3]

David Wagoner'sCollected Poems was nominated for theNational Book Award in 1977 and he won thePushcart Prize that same year. He was again nominated for a National Book Award in 1979 forIn Broken Country. He won his second Pushcart Prize in 1983.^[2] He is the recipient of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters^[5] award, theSherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award, theRuth Lilly Poetry Prize (1991),^[5] theEnglish-Speaking Union prize fromPoetry magazine, and theArthur Rense Prize in 2011. He has also received fellowships from theFord Foundation, theGuggenheim Foundation, and theNational Endowment for the Arts.

Wagoner died in his sleep at a nursing home inEdmonds, Washington, on December 18, 2021, at the age of 95. He was survived by his wife, Robin Seyfried, and their two daughters.^[1][5]

• ''The Man in the Middle (1954)
• Money, Money, Money (1955)
• Rock (1958)
• The Escape Artist (1965)
• Baby, Come On Inside (1968)
• Where is My Wandering Boy Tonight? (1970)
• The Road to Many a Wonder (1974)
• Tracker (1975)
• Whole Hog (1976)
• The Hanging Garden (1980)

• Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke (1972) (selected and arranged by David Wagoner)
• The Best American Poetry 2009

• An Eye For An Eye For An Eye (produced in 1973)^[9]
• First Class: A Play AboutTheodore Roethke (2007).

• David Wagoner,Richard Hugo,John Haines,William Matthews,Reg Saner,Richard Shelton,Gary Soto, andWilliam Stafford (1982).Wild, Peter and Graziano, Frank (ed.).New Poetry of the American West. Durango, CO: Logbridge-Rhodes. pp. 104.ISBN 978-0-937406-19-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)OCLC 8589531,655452420,610178960 (print and on-line)

• Biography atHistoryLink
• David Wagoner at Poets.org
• David Wagoner (1926 – 2021), Poetry Foundation
• David Wagoner poem ''In Distress"
• David Wagoner Sound, Rhythm and Meaning: A Pacific Northwest Chapbook Curated by David Wagoner

• 1926 births
• 2021 deaths
• 20th-century American male writers
• 20th-century American novelists
• 20th-century American poets
• 21st-century American male writers
• 21st-century American poets
• American male novelists
• American male poets
• Indiana University Bloomington alumni
• National Endowment for the Arts Fellows
• The New Yorker people
• Novelists from Ohio
• Novelists from Washington (state)
• Pennsylvania State University alumni
• People from Massillon, Ohio
• People from Whiting, Indiana
• Poets from Ohio
• University of Washington faculty

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• CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list