R. Rennie McQuilkin ’58

Rennie died July 3, 2024, in Hartford, Conn. He was 88.

He came to Princeton from Allendale School in Rochester, N.Y. He later attended Harvard Law School, before thinking better of it, and Columbia University, where he received a master’s degree in English literature. He married Sarah Couch in 1961.

Rennie taught at several private secondary schools until 1992, when he became the founding artistic director of the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival. A few years later, Rennie started the independent poetry press Antrim House. During his own career as a poet, Rennie was a frequent contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry Magazine, The Yale Review, and The American Scholar, and was the author of some 20 collections. He won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. President Barack Obama’s second inaugural poet, Richared Blanco, wrote that some of Rennie’s recent work “brilliantly and powerfully juxtaposes the intimacy of family life with the enmity of our troubled times.”

Sarah died in 2023. Rennie is survived by their three children, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. The class extends its deepest sympathy to them all.