Robert Francis Lima was born on November 7, 1935 in Havana, Cuba, to a Spanish mother, Juanita Millares Vázquez de Lima, and a Cuban journalist father, Roberto F. Lima Rovira. Lima drew much inspiration from his parents’ cultural and professional interests. Since both his parents' families were of Celtic origin (Galician and Northern Portuguese), he explored his deepest roots in the British Isles, where he was especially compelled by their moors, fields, seacoasts, and prehistoric stone structures. It was here that the myths and meanings behind historic monuments and stones came alive for him. This deepened his natural connections with Iberia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and further enriched his writings and interchanges with students and faculty. In addition to Europe and the Americas, Lima traveled throughout Africa and Asia, bringing a global perspective to his work. 

Lima emigrated with his family to New York City in 1945. Its cosmopolitan environment encouraged him to write. He served for six years in the U.S. Army Reserves (1959-1966) while pursuing higher education. He earned a B.A. in English and Philosophy from Villanova University in 1957; he earned an M.A. in Theater and Drama from the same school in 1961; and he earned a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from New York University (NYU) in 1968.  

Early in his career, Lima showed a prolific capacity for both scholarly and creative work. His academic research focused on Spanish dramatists and poets, including Jorge Luis Borges, Federico García Lorca, and Ramón del Valle-Inclán. He did not confine himself to the study of others’ creative works, however. While he pursued his education, he also participated in the New York City poetry scene, where he read weekly at the Judson Memorial Church, Cafe Cino, the Tenth Street Coffeehouse, Les Deux Megots, and other venues. His poetry, which has been described as “sparse and spare,” was influenced by William Carlos Williams and others who “got [him] out of the rut of formal and traditional things” (Myers). Lima was also involved in the theater, serving as Theatre Director and Designer at Harcum College in Bryn Mawr, performing occasionally at La Mama and other stages, and participating in other theatrical events over the course of his career.  Through his work as an editor and translator, Lima also had a gift for bringing new ideas and writers to light. For example, he co-edited an anthology, Seventh Street: Poems of ' Les Deux Megots,' (1961) and the second Judson Review (1963). He was a copyeditor for Crowell Publishing Company, which included work on The Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature (1962) and Roget's University Thesaurus (1963). He worked briefly for Voice of America as well.  

With the sense that artistic and freelancing careers in New York were too “unsettled,” Lima turned to teaching. On college campuses, he found “you get to meet a lot of different people and have an effect on the way people are shaped. You can open up their minds and put some good things in there. Plus teaching [gave him] blocks of time in between to write" (Kosko, quoting Lima). His first academic appointment was as a Lecturer of foreign languages at Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY). During that time, he married Sally Ann Murphy; in the years that followed, the couple had two sons and two daughters: Mark, Keith, Michele, and Debra.  

In 1965, Lima accepted an appointment as Assistant Professor of Spanish at Penn State Beaver—one of the first faculty members hired for that location. There, he taught in his area of expertise, designed the Humanities curriculum for the new campus, and arranged several artistic exhibits. While at Beaver, the Limas cultivated a cordial relationship with Philip Shelley, the Director of General Education at University Park, and this led to a job offer. In 1967, Lima and his family moved to Penn State’s main campus. While Centre County was further away from the urban environs Lima had been accustomed to, it afforded him greater opportunities to teach specialized courses, including ones on Romanticism, 18th-20th Century Drama, Iberian Civilization and Culture, and Occultism. Centre County was also a good place for the Limas to raise their children.

Serving as Chair of Penn State’s Comparative Literature Department from 1970 to 1975, Lima utilized Penn State resources to provide venues for important academic gatherings in his fields of interest. One such event, a fiftieth-anniversary celebration of the Surrealist Movement, attracted scholars and creatives from around the world. Consisting of live theater and music, films, exhibits, and festivities, it resulted in a 1975 special issue in the Journal of General Education (see vol. 27, no. 1, Spring 1975).  During the 1980s, his interdisciplinary reputation parlayed into a term on the Executive Board of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council (PHC). During this time, Lima started and led a “Poetry on Buses” initiative in State College. Modeled after a similar program in Pittsburgh, it sought to “jolt” riders and “provide an alleviation of some of the advertising doldrums,” aimed at inspiring them to read or even write their own verses (Gehman, quoting Lima).  

Over the course of a forty-year career, Lima published dozens of books, more than one hundred-fifty journal articles, more than four hundred poems, and numerous magazine and news articles. When he retired in 2002, he was named Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Comparative Literatures, and Fellow Emeritus of Penn State's Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies. Among Lima’s awards and honors are the following: he was a Cintas Fellow in Poetry; he was named a Senior Fulbright Fellow to Peru in 1976-1977; he was initiated as a Fon (tribal king) in the Menda-Nkwe nation in Cameroon in 1986. The Pennsylvania State University Libraries hosted "The Poetic World of Robert Lima: A Retrospective" in 2004; his poem "Astrals" won the first Phi Kappa Phi Poetry Competition in 2009; he was also named Distinguished Alumnus by Villanova University. He was a member of Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española [the North American Academy of the Spanish Language] as well as of the Real Academia Española [the Royal Academy of Spain], and Academician of the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española. He was inducted into the Enxebre Orden da Vieira in Madrid, Spain, and in Summer 2004, he was named Knight Commander of the Order of Queen Isabel of Spain by His Majesty King Juan Carlos I. In 2011, Lima’s colleagues honored him by compiling a biography and a collection of essays inspired by his research, titled A Confluence of Words: Studies in Honor of Robert Lima.

Robert Lima passed away on February 8, 2022, leaving a legacy of introducing Spanish-language authors to U.S. audiences and contributing modern poetry to both American and Spanish venues.