Deborah Digges, Poet Who Channeled Struggles, Dies at 59

The author of four well-received poetry collections and two equally well-received memoirs, Ms. Digges was at her death a professor of English at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., outside Boston, where she had taught since 1986. Her poems were widely anthologized and appeared regularly in The New Yorker and other publications.

Known for its penetrating observations and lyrical voice, Ms. Digges’s work — both poetry and prose — was informed by her memories of a Missouri girlhood in a family of 12; her experiences as a young wife and her later struggles with a troubled teenage son; the dissolution of two marriages; and the illness and death of her third husband. But though much of her work was rooted in loss, it was also shot through with sly, trenchant humor and a sustained, fervent passion for the natural world.