If the more than 3,000 members of the Find Craig Arnold group on Facebook are any indication, Arnold touched many, many lives.
U English professor Kate Coles, director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute at the Poetry Foundation, said, “The foundation and Poetry Magazine were great supporters of Craig and his work, and there is a terrific sense of sadness and loss here, primarily for Craig the person but also for the poems he will now never write.”
Arnold was enormously accomplished, his work moved from strength to strength, and it’s a tragedy to see a great personal and poetic energy come to an end, Coles said.
He was one of U English professor Jacqueline Osherow’s first students.
“Craig was extraordinary8212;there was no one like him,” she said. “I’m incredibly heartbroken about what happened. He was a great friend and he was a very loyal person. He was a great poet.”
Arnold taught for the University Writing Program while he was working on his doctoral degree.
“Craig created a positive learning environment, one in which students praised him for his ability to be fun and engaging, while teaching a serious subject matter,” said Maureen Mathison, the program’s director. “Although I knew Craig only a short while, I am deeply saddened by his death. My thoughts are with his loved ones.”
Poet Jill Alexander Essbaum, who had known Arnold for 10 years, said the two of them became instant friends when they first met.
“You’ll hear this from many poets: Craig’s charm was enthralling,” she said. “He had a brilliant, undeniable knack for introducing friends to other friends, people who he thought needed to know each other, ever widening his own, generous circle,”
Arnold authored two award-winning volumes of poetry: Shells, chosen by W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Young Poets in 1999, and Made Flesh, in 2008. His poetry has been anthologized in several volumes of the Best American Poetry series, and his poems and articles have appeared in such publications as The New Republic, The Paris Review, Poetry Magazine and The Yale Review, among others.
Arnold received numerous awards and honors, including a Fulbright Fellowship, the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Alfred Hodder Fellowship in Humanities from Princeton University, an Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
“And it’s entirely wrong, guttlingly tragic to be talking about him in the past tense,” Essbaum said. “This is devastating news.”
The Associated PressThis undated file photo released by Ausable Press shows Craig Arnold, 41, a professor of English at the University of Wyoming and a published poet. The search for an acclaimed poet who went missing on a small Japanese island more than 10 days ago will end Friday, an American search-and-rescue coordinator said.