Robert VanderMolen

Robert Lavern VanderMolen, 78, of Grand Rapids, died December 9, 2025. Bob was among Michigan's foremost poets, with a distinctive narrative voice that found an international audience.

A house painter by trade, he was born in Grand Rapids on April 23, 1947, son of Marjorie (Moll) and Robert L. VanderMolen. His childhood on Grand Rapids' west side was jarred by near disaster in 1951, when the family home was leveled by a gas explosion. Bob and his brother, Gary, were taken in by aunts and uncles while their parents recovered. A newspaper photo showed young Bob with bandages on both ears and a look of astonishment on his face.

Bob's writing career began with grade-school stories in the manner of Edgar Allen Poe. But prose soon gave way to poetry. The skinny tailback at Union High School recalled a poem written for his senior prom entitled "Midnight Ecstasy."

As an English major at Michigan State University he published his first book of poetry, "Blood Ink." At Michigan State Bob met fellow poet Dan Gerber, a few years his senior, who became a lifelong friend and mentor, and through whom he joined a circle of other distinguished Spartan writers, including Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane. Gerber and Harrison's Sumac Press would publish three of Bob's early books.

After graduation, Bob hitchhiked to New York City and Florida and then west to Montana, where he worked on a wheat ranch for two summers and made another lifelong friend, Craig Sterry. He landed a babysitting job in San Francisco as his money ran out, trying to write while shepherding five unruly children. ("They drove me batty," he recalled.)

In 1975 he enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Oregon, originally as a painter, before returning east. After a summer's stint as a circus advance man, putting up posters in little towns throughout Quebec, he returned to Grand Rapids, to the west side.

He briefly taught English at Grand Rapids Community College, but recalled that the experience made him a "nervous wreck." Instead, he turned to house painting. Perching on a ladder "gave me time to think," he would say. So would a cup of coffee and a cigarette. And often as not his customers became characters in subsequent poems.

Bob married Deborah Stenman in 1979. Her career helped support his. In 1995 he won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, using the proceeds to take son Colin on a road trip west to visit old haunts, as well as to buy a small cottage on Michigan's Lincoln Lake. The cottage, like the tiny Upper Peninsula cabin he escaped to for many years, became a place of respite and inspiration.

Bob's poems were often poignant, wryly funny stories, vignettes of family, neighbors and the natural world. Through thirteen books and many literary magazines, his work attracted a cult audience. "He was a seer in the oldest sense," wrote the late Jim Harrison. August Kleinzahler, a fellow poet with whom Bob kept up a decades-long correspondence, said of his work, "there is nothing like it in American literature," describing Bob as "a true original."

Deborah (Stenman) VanderMolen died in 2022. Bob was also predeceased by his parents, as well as his brother, Gary, Gary's wife Jan, and brother-in-law Tom Spaak.

He is survived by his son, Colin, stepson, Sean Evans (Meghann) and grandchildren Zoe and Sam. Also by his sister, Nancy VanderMolen Spaak, and nieces and nephews Matt Bronkema, Melissa Mitchell, Mark VanderMolen, Tamara VanderMolen and Jamie Lynn Powell.

Bob was an original member of a coterie of friends who continue to convene weekly at local dive bars, and whose company became a cherished part of his life.

In addition to Colin, Bob was assisted in his last years by Chris Hayes, a true friend and caretaker.

A memorial in Bob's honor is planned for late April.