Peter Davison, 76; Poet and Atlantic Monthly Editor for 3 Decades

Peter Davison, 76, a poetry editor for the Atlantic Monthly and two publishing houses who also wrote poetry himself, died of pancreatic cancer Wednesday in Boston, the Boston Globe reported.

Davison was poetry editor at the magazine for three decades. He also worked for the Atlantic Monthly Press from 1956 until he joined Houghton Mifflin in 1985.

He wrote 11 volumes of poetry and three prose works, including “The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston From Robert Frost to Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath.”

The work included his personal remembrances of Frost, a mentor to Davison; Lowell, who was a friend; and Plath, with whom he had a brief romantic relationship.

A native of New York, Davison grew up in Boulder, Colo., where his father taught at the University of Colorado. Davison graduated from Harvard University in 1949.

Of his poetry, fellow poet W.S. Merwin wrote in 2002, “Peter Davison, for years, has pondered with clear insight the perspectives of affection, attachment, loss and memory, his language spare and his tone classical and deceptively quiet.”