Theodore Rehder was the first director of Dormitories and Dining Services at the University of Iowa, serving from 1929 to 1976.
[4] After graduation, Rehder studied at the Ecole des langues orientales in Paris, France[5] on a Rotary Grant[1] and then at the University of Tehran, where he also taught English grammar.
According to Princeton Alumni Weekly, Rehder "claimed to be the first to make a scientific collection of plants for Kew Gardens from the big deserts of eastern Iran.
One of his publishers, Carcanet Press, reports that, prior to his professional teaching career, Rehder "worked as a checkroom attendant, private dining-room waiter, painter, busboy, gardener, picked apples, polished silver, [...] and [taught] ice-skating in a nursery school.
It contains a long interview (conducted by co-editor Wolfgang Görtschacher), essays by Peter Porter and Tom Artin, and a substantial selection of poems.
Porter characterizes Rehder as being "passionate about the mind as the supreme organ of feeling," noting that "his verse is almost a liturgy of insight.
And they shine too brightly.” Artin stresses that “Rehder is fond of spinning out into a poem the details of some incident that must strike the reader as trivial […] tracing the ramifications meticulously, methodically, bearing down on each fact until the trivial resonates with the stellar – daily life telescoping into the big bang.” Rehder's early scholarly and literary work included free verse translations of the 14th-century Persian poet Hafiz.
The volume, with essays by sixteen international scholars and poets, honors his classroom teaching and his substantial scholarship in the history of modern poetry.