Steve Orlen, born in 1942, worked at the UA for close to four decades and was an internationally renowned poet before he died of cancer in November of last year.

“”He was jovial and great to work with,”” Jerrold E. Hogle told the Daily Wildcat in November 2010, just after Orlen’s passing. He first met Orlen when Hogle came to campus as a new assistant professor of English in 1974.

“”We will all miss him — students, faculty and staff alike,”” Hogle said in an email written to students last semester. “”But will also remain deeply grateful to him for all that he has given us, on so many fronts and for so many good years, at the University of Arizona.””

Orlen worked at the UA as well as Warren Wilson College in its masters of fine arts program for writers. He also acted as visiting faculty at universities such as University of Houston, Goddard College and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

Orlen penned two chapbooks and four books of poetry, including ””The Elephant’s Child: New and Selected Poems 1978-2005,”” ””Kisses”” and ””This Particular Eternity.”” Orlen’s honors included a Guggenheim Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation as well as three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. He also won the George Dillon Memorial Award from Poetry magazine.

Of Orlen’s “”This Particular Eternity,”” author Tony Hoagland, another winner of the Guggenheim Fellowship, wrote, “”Anyone who believes, in this era of the fragment, that the discursive narrative American poem is linear or simplistic or exhausted, should try these poems; at his best, Orlen is the equal of anyone writing.””