Mills, Ralph J., Jr. 1931–2007

(Ralph Joseph Mills, Jr.)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born December 16, 1931, in Chicago, IL; died of complications from Parkinson's disease, August 18, 2007, in Park Ridge, IL. Educator, poet, and critic. Mills was a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle for more than thirty years. Throughout his career Mills wrote more than a dozen volumes of poetry and nearly a dozen books of criticism and other nonfiction, and edited the works of fellow poet Theodore Roethke. His own poetry was not always easy to absorb, nor was it meant to be, according to his colleagues, but he enjoyed making the work of others accessible and enjoyable, both in the classroom and in his criticism. Mills was described as an unusual critic, in that he devoted himself to promoting and supporting the work of other poets, rather than tearing it apart. In commenting on his own work, the poet once told CA that he endeavored to follow in the footsteps of such masters as William Carlos Williams. In 2000 Mills's collection Grasses Standing: Selected Poems was awarded the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America. His other poetry collections include March Light, for which he received a Carl Sandburg Prize for Poetry in 1984, and the 1997 collection In Wind's Edge. Mills's criticism includes Creation's Very Self: On the Personal Element in Recent American Poetry (1969) and Cry of the Human: Essays on Contemporary American Poetry (1975).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, August 21, 2007, sec. 1, p. 11.