Born as military brat just down the street (he likes to imagine) from where Theodor Adorno was lecturing on the culture industry & modernist aesthetics. Bounced all over in his formative years -- Monterey CA, Syracuse NY, various bits of Germany, west Texas, western Kentucky -- then more or less settled down in middle Tennessee, but not before contracting a permanent sense of dislocation. Studied at Virginia Tech & Cornell University, with concomitant degrees. Now in south Florida, where he lives with his wife, a scholar of early modern & contemporary drama, & his two just unbelievably beautiful daughters.
Considers poetry his first calling (after several ephemeral chapbooks, Anarchy [2003] his first full-length collection), but has been deeply involved in scholarship on the poet Louis Zukofsky (1904-1978), whose biography he has written.