Robert B. Nichols

Robert Brayton Nichols (1919-October 14, 2010) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, and landscape architect.

Nichols was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. He served as an officer in the United States Navy in World War II and graduated from Harvard University.

His poetry includes the volumes Slow Newsreel of Man Riding Train (1962), number 15 in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series, and Red Shift (1977). His wrote the novels From the Steam Room (1993), and a four-part series of novels set in the utopia Nghsi-Altai, and the short story collection In the Air (1991). He was a co-founder of the Judson Poets Theatre and participated in the Theater for the New City and the Bread and Puppet Theater.

His first wife was the Village Voice editor Mary Perot Nichols; they divorced in 1969. He married author Grace Paley in 1972; she died in 2007.

His work in landscape architecture includes a redesign of Washington Square Park.