Robin Metz, Knox College’s longest tenured faculty member, passed away on Tuesday after a long battle with cancer.
Associate Professor of English at Knox, Nick Regiacorte spoke with WGIL a few days after the news about the lost of his colleague, friend and one of the school’s most beloved teachers.
“He’s somebody that makes you feel like you’re the most important person in the world at the time you’re speaking with him,” Regiacorte. “He’s the definition, I’d say, of someone with gravitas.”
Metz was an internationally known writer whose work is prolific, particularly in poetry.
Metz co-founded the Knox Creative Writing Program, an intensive studio-style program that’s one of the college’s most popular majors.
Regiacorte remembers a time when Metz’s contemporaries were either retiring or focusing on their own writing.
But Regiacorte says he was devoted to his friends, students and colleagues but also as a neighbor.
Metz told Regiacorte a story once, that when he first bought the Wisconsin farm he died on, about twenty years ago he brought back to Galesburg a bunch of trees.
He went around town digging holes and planting the trees, putting orange tape around it to make it look like it was a part of a city plan.
Regiacorte is not even entirely sure the story is true, but he thinks it captures the spirit of the man.
“He challenges conventional thinking and always has in many ways,” Regiacorte says.
Even as he underwent chemo treatments he continued to teach, travel, write and advocate for the college.
At the suggestion that he slow down Metz told Regiacorte, “This is my life this is who I am.”
Knox plans to hold a celebration of life for Metz sometime in the spring.
