Richard Elden Dankleff attended the University of Nebraska before serving in World War II. After the war, he completed a BS at Columbia University in 1949. Dankleff earned an MA from the University of Nebraska in 1954 and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1959. Dankleff was a faculty member in the Oregon State University English Department from 1963 until his retirement in 1987. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, he wrote poetry and led a poetry workshop in the Corvallis community. He continued to mentor other writers of poetry after his retirement. Dankleff's poetry was published as individual pieces as well as in three collections. Popcorn Girl (1979) and Westerns (1984) were published by the Oregon State University Press; Off Watch was published by Oregon Sunrise Press in 2001. He died in Corvallis in 2010.
