That same year he became an assistant professor of English at University at Buffalo, where he has spent most of his career; in 2002, he became an artist-in-residence there.
[2] Dennis writes often of quotidian, middle-class life, but beneath the modest, reasonably lighted surfaces of the poems lie unexpected possibilities that create contrast and vibrancy.
In the poem "Progressive Health" (from Practical Gods) Dennis uses a similar approach for a proposition that is a bioethicist's nightmare.
In some of his more recent poems, Dennis invokes guardian angels and other domestic deities to animate his poetry.
Dennis's language here is so quiet and straightforward that when he alters course yet again to imagine the transformation of a god in the mind of his reader, the change seems natural.