On the back of the book jacket of Stephen Dunn's 1989 collection of poems, Between Angels, Philip Booth states, "To read Stephen Dunn ... is to see the complexities of one's own dailiness brought to light ... One starts to see the flower on the kitchen table." It is this ability to bring to light both the ordinary, expected, nonthreatening aspects of life and the inexplicable, startling, even subversive elements of human existence that has made Dunn one of the best poetic voices of the late twentieth century.

Stephen Dunn was born on 24 June 1939 in Forest Hills, New York, to a salesman, Charles F. Dunn, and his wife, Ellen Fleishman Dunn. He received a degree in history from Hofstra University (B.A., 1962), played pro basketball for the Williamsport (Pennsylvania) Billies from 1962 to 1963, and afterward worked a few years as an advertising copywriter in New York City. In 1966 Dunn went to Spain...