Poet and teacher Patricia Dobler was putting the finishing touches on two new projects -- a poetry collection and a master's degree in writing program -- when she died suddenly at her Oakland home Saturday. She was 65.

Carlow College, where Ms. Dobler was associate professor of English, will launch its graduate writing program in January.

Ms. Dobler was to be program director and had been working on it for eight years, said Samuel Hazo, founder and president of the International Poetry Forum, which is headquartered at Carlow.

"Her many friends and admirers -- and I was one of them -- know how committed she was to the master of fine arts program," Hazo said yesterday. "That could well be her best memorial where future students will be as grateful of her vision as her past and current students are now."

"The program was really based on her capabilities," said Sister Grace Ann Geibel, Carlow president. "Pat was our resident talent. I'm just shocked and at a loss for words right now."

Lisa Mullen of Baltimore, one of Ms. Dobler's two daughters, said yesterday her mother had completed her third collection, titled "Now," and was making plans for its publication last week.

Ms. Dobler suffered from a debilitating lung disease for eight years but had been recovering, her daughter said.

"She was healthy and able to exercise and making plans for a visit from her grandchildren," Mullen said. "Her death was so sudden."

Ms. Dobler not only wrote poetry, but taught in both at Carlow and in the college's nondegree workshop, Madwomen in the Attic.

Her "madwomen" were frequently older students who were taking up writing seriously for the first time.

She was named head of Madwomen in 1986, the year she joined the Carlow faculty. In 1992, Ms. Dobler launched a literary journal, "Voices From the Attic," to showcase the workshoppers' writing.

"Her efforts on behalf of older working women are unparalleled, both in Pittsburgh and around the country," said fellow poet Lynn Emanuel, a University of Pittsburgh professor. "There's no community poetry program like it anywhere else."

Emanuel said the program appealed to women "who were longing to find support, to be together, not because of any pathology, but because they wanted to be writers. Pat reached out to women who were disenfranchised and helped them find their voice."

Although her workshop students were frequently untrained writers, Ms. Dobler had high standards, Emanuel said.

"She could be as tough as hell on them. Her classes were empowering, but they were tough and exacting, too. She believed that if you worked hard enough, read enough and loved poetry enough, anybody could write a poem."

Maggie Anderson taught Ms. Dobler in Pitt's graduate school in the late 1970s, but said she came to realize that "Pat was my teacher.

"She knew so much because she was always reading -- poetry, magazines, contemporary novels. I was at her house last week and there must have been six or seven books lying around open and marked."

Anderson, who teaches English and directs the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University in Ohio, formed a writer's group with Ms. Dobler, Emanuel and Judith Vollmer about 25 years ago.

The group has met faithfully every year, said Anderson.

"Pat was the heart of the group because she supported everybody in the group," Vollmer said. She teaches at Pitt's Greensburg campus and is an award-winning poet.

She was born in the steel mill town of Middletown, Ohio, and her work focused on the life of the working class, particularly the families of recent immigrants, in such books as "Forget Your Wife," "Talking to Strangers" and "UXB."

"Pat had the uncanny talent to link the actual world, the gritty, sorrowful tragic world of labor and the people involved in those terrible jobs and family lives to a vision of beauty," Emanuel said.

"Her poems were amazing, original works."

Both Anderson and Vollmer draw on the lives of working-class Americans as well and both believe Ms. Dobler succeeded in elevating and honoring that culture.

"The most important thing Pat did was combing her working-class roots with a really strong sense of the spiritual world," said Anderson.

To Vollmer, Ms. Dobler was "a sister of the lower-middle class. "She wrote in this forthright, blunt, candid American voice, but was inspired by the folkloric and transcendental themes of European poets. Her favorite poet was [Czeslaw] Milosz.

"Pat's poems were more complicated than just that 'Rustbelt' theme."

Vollmer said a literary memorial for Ms. Dobler is planned for September.

She is also survived by another daughter, Stephanie Cerra, of San Francisco; two grandchildren; and her ex-husband, the writer Bruce Dobler.

A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Ryan Catholic Newman Center, 4450 Bayard St., Oakland.

Burial will follow in Calvary Cemetery, Hazelwood.