A poet as well as an influential literary critic, James Longenbach (1959-2022) is the author of six collections of poems, including Forever, Earthling, and The Iron Key, and of nine books of literary criticism, including The Lyric Now, How Poems Get Made, and The Art of the Poetic Line. His poems and his reviews of contemporary American poets have appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review. Awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Mellon Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowship, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Nation/Discovery Award, and numerous teaching awards. Longenbach was the Joseph Henry Gilmore Professor of English at the University of Rochester. His wife is the novelist Joanna Scott.