On the Iowa plains, cottonwoods
sacred to the Lakota,
take root near deep ditches

along gravel roads like the one that
serviced our family farm
where each summer

webs of seed spirited out
like spider’s silk into the air
around our house that’d been built

of uncured cottonwood beams like
those under our “old kitchen” floor
that in time came crashing down,

pulpy, perhaps because they’d
grown too fast. Years
later, my son showed

me an ancient tree
down among old slate markers
near Spoon River where

what I thought was an oak
turned out to be two cottonwoods
in twisted embrace around a stone,

no silk in the air at this time
of year, only a few
leaves clinging to the

names of those long since
returned to dust
in that dank yard.

David Lampe (1941-2025), a poet, longtime member of the Buffalo literary community, and professor emeritus of English at Buffalo State University, where he taught for 37 years, died on June 5th in Elmwood, Illinois. David was 84.

Lampe was the author of the poetry collections The Trees Walked (2006), Quivers of Anonymous of Elmwood (2009), and more recently, Close to the Bone (Exile Editions, 2020). This poem appears in Close to the Bone.

David was born on Jan. 18, 1941, in Storm Lake, Iowa and grew up on a grain and livestock farm near the small Iowa town of Albert City. When not doing farm chores or tending to his prize calf, Shorty, he preferred to read in his treehouse. So, it was fitting that after leaving Albert City and graduating from Buena Vista College, he earned a master’s degree and doctorate in English at the University of Nebraska. He married Ruth Eickstaedt Lampe (later a Buffalo Parkside Community Association neighborhood leader and English teacher in Buffalo schools) in 1963, in Storm Lake near Buena Vista College, where they fell in love during a production of “The Lark.”

Lampe taught briefly at Bemidji (Minn.) State College, Buena Vista College and the University of Nebraska before moving to Buffalo in 1969, where he spent 37 years teaching English literature at SUNY Buffalo State University. Not content with the same courses year after year, he relished the reading and learning required to teach a new subject. He began as a 15th century English scholar and evolved regularly, becoming expert at Irish poetry and, eventually, Canadian literature. And he never really retired, not from reading, writing or learning.

In 2005, he and his wife also established the David and Ruth Lampe Poetry Endowment at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. Upon his retirement from teaching in 2007, Lampe donated over 1,000 books from his personal library, including many rare books and first editions, to the Archives and Special Collections at the E. H. Butler Library on the Buffalo State University campus.

In addition to his three collections of poetry, Lampe published over 25 scholarly works, papers, and articles in scholarly journals. He edited eight books and anthologies, including The Legend of Being Irish and Five Irish Poets. Another passion was bringing hundreds of poets and writers to Buffalo, among them three Pulitzer Prize winners and a cast of characters that included John Montague, Thomas Kinsella, Seamus Heaney, Wendell Berry, David Huddle, Henry Taylor, Gwendolyn Brooks, Barry Callaghan, Robert Creeley and William Kennedy. Late nights and loud toasts were a common occurrence in the Victorian home in Buffalo’s Parkside neighborhood he inhabited for 53 years until moving back to the Midwest.

Aside from Ruth, who died in 2015, David had a few other loves: travel, books, jazz, golf, mussels, whiskey and wine. He also loved his children and grandchildren, most of whom he took on European vacations. A favorite pastime was reading to anyone who would listen, even if he had to walk after them when they left the room. He was a founder of Western New York Medievalists, a director of the Faculty-Student Association at Buffalo State and worked with Ruth for the betterment of their beloved Parkside neighborhood in Buffalo. Born and raised a Lutheran, he joined the Roman Catholic Church in 2024 and, in recent months, had been researching popes and the papacy.

David’s family is planning a memorial service in Buffalo for his friends, neighbors, Buffalo State University colleagues, and members of the Buffalo literary community this coming September. Watch for a specific date announcement in the Just Buffalo Literary Center community events page, or at the non-profit arts and culture journalism website The Buffalo Hive.

The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.