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.