In an interview with Phil Paradis, T.R. Hummer referred to his poems as "acts of attention" and called his predominant poetic concern--passion--a "way to make connection" with the world. With the publication of his first five books of poetry, Hummer has established himself--alongside such figures as Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner, and, more recently, Robert Penn Warren, James Dickey, and Dave Smith--as a writer of the self, concerned with individuality, self-knowledge, and, by extension, the moral and psychological growth of the human race.

Born on 7 August 1950 to Charles (a postman and farmer) and Marion Slocum Hummer, Terry Randolph Hummer grew up in Noxobee Country in rural eastern Mississippi not far from the area made famous by Faulkner. Hummer earned his B.A. and M.A. in English (1972, 1974) from the University of Southern Mississippi, where he studied under fiction writer Gordon Weaver, and earned his Ph.D. (1980) at the...