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Patricia Goedicke (1931-2006) and Leonard Wallace Robinson (1912-1999) met at the MacDowell Colony in the summer of 1968. According to an article in the February 6, 2000 issue of the Missoulian, the attraction between Goedicke and Robinson was immediate. Shortly after their initial meeting, Goedicke moved in with Robinson, who lived in New York City at the time. In 1971, they moved to San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico, and in 1981 they moved to Missoula, Montana, which became their permanent residence until Robinson’s passing in 1999 and Goedicke’s in 2006.

Leonard Wallace Robinson was born in Malden, Massachusetts, to Henry M. Robinson, Sr. and Ellen Flynn. The religious affiliations of Leonard’s parents (Henry, a Jewish immigrant, and Ellen, a Catholic) would play prominently in his unpublished biographical works. Amongst Leonard’s ten siblings is novelist Henry Morton Robinson (married to Gertrude), author of The Cardinal. In 1935, Leonard graduated from Columbia University. Amongst his classmates were Robert Giroux (of Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Robert Lax.

Over the next three decades, Robinson held a number of editorial positions, including editor-in-chief of Colliers magazine from 1956-1957 and executive editor for Rinehart, Holt, and Winston. Robinson also published a number of journalistic pieces for The New Yorker and The New York Times, as well as short stories appearing in Harper’s and The New Yorker. In 1950 his short story “Ruin of the Soul” appeared in Prize Stories, the annual collection of O. Henry Award winning stories. Amongst his early book length works are The Secret Service Chief, for which Robinson was a ghost writer, and The Assassin.

Before meeting Goedicke, Leonard married four times. In 1937, Robinson married Frances Fox, a friend of Anais Nin. Robinson’s second wife was Roseanne Smith, to whom he was married from 1943-1954. During his second marriage Robinson’s only child, Roderick, was born in 1946. After divorcing Smith, Robinson married Marie Nyswander, a noted psychiatrist. Nyswander published The Power of Sexual Surrender in 1959 under the name Marie N. Robinson. The two divorced in 1965. Robinson’s fourth wife was Elizabeth Barrett, to whom he was married from 1965 until their divorce in 1971.

Patricia Goedicke was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Helen Mulvey and John McKenna, professor of Neuroanatomy and Psychiatry at Dartmouth College. Patricia had one sibling, Jean-Marie, who served as a professor of English at the American University in Beirut for many years. In high school, Patricia was a highly competitive amateur skier and a contributor to her local newspaper in Hanover, New Hampshire. Patricia published her first poem in Seventeen in 1947 before attending Middlebury College from 1949-1953. There she studied under Robert Frost and other Middlebury faculty. Immediately after college, Patricia worked for Harcourt, Brace and World in New York. While in New York, she continued to sharpen her craft, attending a series of lectures given by W.H. Auden at the YM-YWHA (Young Men’s-Young Women’s Hebrew Association).

In 1956, Patricia married Victor Goedicke, a professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Ohio University, and moved to Athens, Ohio shortly thereafter. In 1958, John Crowe Ransom accepted three of her poems for the Kenyon Review: “Proudflesh,” “Calypso,” and “Circumnavigation.” Patricia attained her Masters of Arts at Ohio University in 1965. While living in Athens, Patricia befriended poet Hollis Summers, as well as Pat Grean, with whom she edited a local literary journal titled Page One. In 1968, Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc. published her first book of poetry, Between Oceans.

After moving in with Robinson, Goedicke taught English at Hunter College. Robinson taught Journalism at Columbia University. In their brief time in New York, Goedicke and Robinson befriended a number of writers and academics including writers Rosellen Brown, Erica Jong, and Nancy Klein, journalist Paul Brodeur, Professor of Journalism Larry Pinkham, Professor of Dramatic Arts Bert O. States, and editor Rust Hills. As stated in an unpublished interview by Marcia Corbino in 1980, Goedicke and Robinson planned to teach and write in New York before deciding to move to Mexico where they could live on their savings and dedicate more time to writing.

During their years in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuanto, Goedicke and Robinson produced a number of works. From 1971-1981, Robinson wrote a novel titled The Man Who Loved Beauty, which was published in 1976, as well as a number of poems that would appear in his first book of poetry In the Whale. Goedicke wrote four books of poetry during that time: For the Four Corners (1976), The Trail that Turns on Itself (1978), The Dog that Was Barking Yesterday (1980), and Crossing the Same River (1980). For Goedicke and Robinson, San Miguel de Allende provided them with a rich artistic and literary community that consisted of both permanent residents and visiting writers from the United States, including Robert Phillips, Constance Urdang, Donald Finkel, Patricia Hampl, James Moore, C.D. Wright, Forrest Gander, and David and Judy Ray.

By 1980, Goedicke and Robinson sought teaching appointments in the United States in order to have access to better health care in light of Robinson’s cardiovascular condition. During the 1980-1981 academic year, Goedicke taught Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. While Goedicke pursued an extension of her contract at Sarah Lawrence, she ultimately accepted a temporary position for the 1981-1982 academic year at The University of Montana in Missoula, filling a position previously occupied by Naomi Lazard. In the fall 1982, Goedicke, along with Paul Zarazyski, helped fill in for the ailing Richard Hugo, teaching his graduate-level workshop that semester. By 1983, Goedicke began a tenure track position at The University of Montana that ended with her retirement in 2003.

As professors at The University of Montana, Robinson served as an adjunct in 1989, filling in for Bill Kittredge as leader of a graduate workshop that included David Allan Cates, while Goedicke’s career was highlighted by a Distinguished Scholar Award in 1991 and the 2003 H.G. Merriam Award for distinguished contributions to Montana literature. Goedicke’s students included Sandra Alcosser, Greg Glazner, Jon Davis, Derick Burleson, Debra Kang Dean, Melissa Kwasny, Sarah Gridley, and Chris Dombrowski.

One notable influence on Goedicke’s writing was the Rattlesnake Ladies’ Salon. This group, which convened for a number of years over the eighties and nineties included Goedicke, Deirdre McNamer, Kate Gadbow, Caroline Patterson, Connie Poten, Sandra Alcosser, Beth Ferris, and Marnie Prange. According to Lois Welch, in her history of The University of Montana Creative Writing program entitled All Our Stories are Here, “The Rattlesnake Ladies’ Writing Salon (deliberately so named) met regularly during the 1990s to give Missoula’s women writers a community of camaraderie and criticism away from students and faculty, from stalwart husbands—and from fishing stories.”

During their years in Missoula, Goedicke and Robinson published several works. Robinson published two books of poetry, In the Whale in 1983 and Now and Zen, which was published posthumously in 2005. Goedicke published eight books of poetry: King of Childhood (1984), The Wind of Our Going (1985), Listen Love (1986), The Tongues We Speak (1989), Paul Bunyan’s Bearskin (1992), Invisible Horses (1996), As Earth Begins to End (2001), and Baseball Field at Night (published posthumously in 2009). Goedicke’s selected volume of poems The Tongues We Speak was named a notable book by The New York Times Book Review in 1990 and As Earth Begins to End was named by Booklist as one of the top 10 books of the year.

Leonard Wallace Robinson, who had been suffering from dementia, passed away in his sleep on April 30, 1999. Patricia Goedicke passed away on July 14, 2006. In the days leading up to her death, Goedicke was working on her final book while undergoing cancer treatment.