Biography
I was born in 1968 in Cooperstown, New York. I've also lived in Georgia and Kentucky, and since 1981 have made my home in Cincinnati, Ohio.
I've been fascinated by poetry since I was very young. As an adolescent, the wrenching emotional power of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, the magesterial lines of T.S. Eliot, and the vigorous daily scenes of William Carlos Williams laid the foundation for my explorations of the world in poetry. Later, I attended Ohio University, where study with the poets Wayne Dodd and John Haines taught me close attention to the shape of the poetic line and precision of the poetic image. Reading contemporary poetry and essays by contemporary poets also gave me an interest in the critical discussion of poetry.
After graduating college, I attended graduate school at the University of Cincinnati, where I earned a Ph.D. I continued to study poetry writing with Andrew Hudgins, who introduced me to traditional meter in a rigorous way, and Don Bogen, who taught me to ground the reading of modern poetry in a more scholarly context. I also began an active correspondence with the poet and critic Dana Gioia, whose ideas about poetry's place in American culture would become a crucial influence on me. I also became active in small-press publishing, helping to edit a poetry journal. I also published numerous poems and essays about contemporary poetry.
I left academe after earning my doctorate in 1996 to work as a marketing writer in the corporate world. During this time, I also published three critical studies of American poetry and two collections of my own poems; my wife and I also started our own poetry press. The press saw surprising growth, and in 2003, I decided to take the plunge, leave corporate life, and publish poetry full-time; I've done this ever since. The press is independent of any institution, academic or otherwise, and focuses on bringing a wide range of titles to an educated audience.
My interests in poetry are broad and eclectic; while my own poetry and scholarly background tends towards the traditionally formal, my press has published all kinds of poetry, ranging from traditional to aggressively experimental. As a reader, I enjoy all kinds of work; that's one of the real pleasures of operating an independent poetry press. This openness informs everything I do as a poetry reader.
