Paul James Petrie (July 1, 1928 – November 9, 2012) was an American poet and professor emeritus of English and creative writing at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, where he taught for over 30 years.

From this fact may have arisen his abiding love of nature, while his interest in poetry was probably affected by his mother's Canadian grade school education (much memorization of poems) and her ability to recite whole swatches of Longfellow and Tennyson verbatim.

While still finishing his thesis, he was drafted into the army and spent the next two years in the Service, the latter half in Alaska reading newspapers for Intelligence.

He was married to the artist Sylvia Spencer Petrie, a printmaker and former member of the 19 on Paper art group, who has also illustrated several of his books.

If there is one theme that appears to be pervasive, it is mutability, the transience of everything, and the various ways we humans attempt to deal with it in our lives.