He is the author of eight collections of poems, most recently, Variations on Dawn and Dusk (Omnidawn Publishing), longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry.
His other books include A Whaler’s Dictionary (Milkweed Editions), a collection of essays about Moby Dick.
His parents divorced when he was three and he was raised by his mother in Colorado, and spent summers in Ithaca, New York, with his father and grandparents.
[5] He attended Hamilton College, the University of Denver, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
He has taught writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and currently he is an assistant professor of English at Colorado State University.