FRANKLIN D. REEVE

FRANKLIN D. REEVE, a poet, translator, and former professor of Russian Language and Literature, died June 28, 2013. He was 84. A graduate of Princeton University, he received master’s and doctoral degrees from Columbia University. He taught at Columbia before joining the faculty at Wesleyan, where he taught full-time until he decided to devote more time to his writing and became a part-time faculty member. He published more than 30 books, including 10 volumes of poetry and translations of Russian authors. One book chronicled a trip to the Soviet Union in 1962 with Robert Frost on a good-will mission requested by President John F. Kennedy. At an early point in his career, while in graduate school, he began acting professionally, but gave it up because he feared that immersing himself in dramatic characters might erode his own poetic voice. He also founded the journal The Poetry Review. He translated Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1970 Nobel lecture and delivered the keynote address at the International Conference of Translators of Russian Literature in Moscow in 2007. His first three marriages ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife, Laura C. Stevenson; a son from his first marriage; a daughter and two sons from his second marriage; two stepdaughters; his sister and brother; and 18 grandchildren.