He taught previously at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, and in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. He is also a contributing editor at The Alaska Quarterly Review.

He has written four books of poems, an autobiography, a memoir, and a collection of essays about poetry and writing.

His work has appeared regularly in The American Poetry Review, The Threepenny Review, The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine.

He currently lives in California with his wife, Doreen Gildroy, and their daughter, Emily.

• New And Selected Poems. (Houghton Mifflin, 2004)
• Baby B [memoir]. (Graywolf Press, 2004)
• A Difficult Grace: On Poets, Poetry, and Writing [essays]. (University of Georgia Press, 2000)
• Secret Life [autobiography]. (Pantheon, 1995; Vintage paperback, 1996)
• God Hunger [poems]. (Viking Penguin, 1989; paperback, 1990)
• In Winter [poems]. (Holt, 1981)
• Threats Instead of Trees [poems]. (Yale University Press, 1974)