John Gery is from Lititiz, Pennsylvania, and attended Princeton, the University of Chicago, and Stanford, where he was a Mirrielees Fellow in Creative Writing. His previous books include Charlemagne: A Song of Gesture (1983), The Burning of New Orleans (1988), and Three Poems (1989), and his critical work Nuclear Annihilation and Contemporary American Poetry: Ways of Nothingness was published by the University Press of Florida. An associate professor of English at the University of New Orleans, he has also taught literature and creative writing at Stanford, San Jose State, and the University of Iowa, as well as at Brunnenburg Castle, Italy. He has received an NEA Fellowship, the Deep South Writers Poetry Award, and the Academy of American Poets Prize, among other awards.