William Helmuth Heyen, poet and essayist, was born in Brooklyn, New York. His boyhood home was in suburban Long Island. Heyen's genealogy is important because he often writes about his relatives--past and present--in his poetry. His father, Henry Jurgen Heyen, was a bartender and a carpenter, and his mother was Wilhelmina Woermke Heyen. His father left all his relatives behind in Germany when he immigrated to the United States in 1928; two of his brothers were killed fighting for the Nazi cause in the early 1940s.

Heyen took his undergraduate degree from State University of New York College at Brockport in 1961. He married Hannelore Greiner on 7 July 1962; they have two children, William and Kristen. As an undergraduate, he was best known for his athletic abilities: at 6'4" he was a formidable basketball player, and he was twice an All-American in soccer. Heyen once jokingly traced the beginnings of his...