Mason returned to the United States when he was hired to write the screenplay for a film based on a novel he had written.

After a part-time teaching stint at Colorado College, he began studying at the University of Rochester under Anthony Hecht.

[6] The post of Colorado Poet Laureate comes with a small stipend and an expectation of ten public appearances in the state each of the four years in the term, but Mason chose to greatly expand on those expectations, attempting to visit all 64 counties of the state during his term in order to share poetry in public appearances.

He is coeditor of four major anthologies and has authored dozens of poems, essays, reviews, translations, stories and memoirs.

"[7] An additional connection to a different part of Colorado is that Mason's maternal grandfather, a coal miner turned physician, is remembered in Grand Junction as the "last of the horse-and-buggy-doctors.