Whitehall native was award-winning poet, playwright and storyteller

Jan. 4, 1942 - Nov. 27, 2018

Robin Metz was a literary artist. His prose was at times as subtle as soft brushstrokes, his words a carefully chosen palette of colorful emotion.

The Whitehall native was an award-winning poet, playwright and storyteller and had the distinction of serving 51 years — longer than any other active faculty member — at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill.

Mr. Metz, 76, died Nov. 27 at his farm in Ferryville, Wis., after a nearly two-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

A 1960 graduate of Baldwin High School, Mr. Metz lettered in three sports — football, baseball and wrestling — while maintaining his rank as an honor student.

He was awarded a football scholarship to Princeton University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 1964. Mr. Metz went on to the University of Iowa, where he earned a master’s degree in fine arts three years later.

It was his time at Iowa’s famous Writers’ Workshop that shaped much of Mr. Metz’s future, said his wife, Elizabeth Carlin Metz.

His mentors, including literary giants like Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Yates and R.V. Cassill, advised Mr. Metz to go into academia as a way to put bread on the table, especially with two young daughters, but to also carve out time to write.

“Which is what buying the farm was all about,” said his wife about the property in Wisconsin that started with a 40-acre parcel that he bought around 1969 and grew to 440 acres today, including a renovated 1850 farmhouse.

“Robin knew he wanted a place where he could write,” Ms. Carlin Metz said. “And the topography is very much like Pittsburgh, with its ridges and rivers.”

The farm, just a quartermile from the Mississippi River, also served as a retreat for students, and it was where Mr. Metz wanted to spend his last days.

“He planted 25,000 trees and learned about bird song, wildflowers and trees,” his wife said. “He was an incredible student of nature for 40 years at this farm.”

The couple’s main home is in Galesburg, where Mr. Metz began teaching at Knox College in 1967. Over the years, he taught all levels of writing there, including fiction, poetry and playwriting. In 1967, he co-founded the school’s Program in Creative Writing, and was its director for many years.

“The general principle seems so common now — like a workshop program for writers with visiting speakers and conversations about writing, but in the mid-1960s that was very rare at the undergraduate level,” said college president Teresa Arrnott. “It was a revolutionary idea and it was his idea.”

The college will feel Mr. Metz’s presence for generations to come, she said, thanks to decisions he made and faculty members whom he brought on board.

“This institution won’t be the same without him,” she said. “We are the inheritors of his ideas.”

When she arrived as a student at Knox in 1991, Monica Berlin was astonished by Mr. Metz’s generosity toward his students.

“He was legendary — a giant,” she recalled. “We all revered him and felt so lucky to be in his presence and we couldn’t believe that he would give us the time and energy that he did.”

When she returned to the school in 1998, this time as a colleague, she found him unchanged and as gracious as ever.

“He turned out to be my great mentor and teacher, and then my colleague,” said Ms. Berlin, who now is chair of the college’s English program and associate director of the creative writing program. “I will miss his incredible passion for the students and their work. He was one of a kind; I’ll miss everything about him.”

Mr. Metz’s poems, short stories and other works of fiction were published countless times, and his 1999 book “Unbidden Angel,” won the Maria Rilke International Poetry Prize.

The book also served as a salve for Mr. Metz after the unexpected death of his previous wife, Elizabeth Jahnke, in 1993, just six months after their marriage.

“She was one of my closest friends,” said Ms. Carlin Metz, who met her husband through Ms. Jahnke.

“He was absolutely shattered and devastated. He got through it by writing grief poetry.”

The couple comforted each other until two years later, when they found their relationship had grown into something different, said Ms. Carlin Metz, who chairs the theater department at Knox.

“We slowly realized that our feelings for each other were shifting,” said Ms. Carlin Metz, who married Mr. Metz in December 1995 in London.

Her husband was never bitter or angry about his diagnosis, Ms. Carlin Metz said, but was thankful that he was able to spend his last days surrounded by colleagues, friends and family.

“He never got upset about it — he was so Zen,” she said. “There was no rage. He never wept. He must have kissed me 25 times. There was no word left unsaid.”

Along with his wife, Mr. Metz is survived by daughters Lisa Metz and Ronnah Metz, both of La Crosse, Wis., and four grandsons.

Because Mr. Metz chose to donate his remains to science, there was no funeral.

The family suggests memorial contributions to the Robin Metz Fund for the Creative Arts at www.knox.edu/givenow.