Erica Jong was born in New York City to Seymour and Eda Mirsky Mann. She took a B.A. from Barnard College in 1963 and an M.A. from Columbia in 1965. She taught English at the City University of New York in 1964-1965 and in 1969-1970; between 1967 and 1969 she taught in Heidelberg, Germany, for the University of Maryland. Divorced from her second husband, Allan Jong, in 1975, she now lives with Jonathan Fast and a daughter, Molly, in Connecticut.

The notoriety Jong received upon the publication of her first novel, Fear of Flying (1973), has tended to obscure the fact that she is a popular and good poet. She published two volumes of verse before Fear of Flying; two have appeared subsequently. Her first two books were published together as Here Comes & Other Poems in 1975, and her first three volumes of verse have been collected in a boxed edition. Too frequently...