Charles Boer was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He took his undergraduate degree in 1961 from Western Reserve University, Cleveland, and was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Florence 1961-1962 and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Harvard University 1962-1963. He earned his Ph.D. in comparative literature in 1967 from State University of New York, Buffalo. Since 1966, he has taught at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, where he is presently a professor of English and comparative literature. He was the recipient of the Swallow Press New Poetry Series Award in 1969 for his first volume of poems, The Odes. In 1972, he was nominated for the National Book Award for his translations The Homeric Hymns (1971).

Boer has used his experience as a classicist and especially as a translator of classical verse as a rich source for the forms and styles of his original verse in the two volumes he has produced. His...