Steve Kowit (June 30, 1938 – April 2, 2015) was an American poet, essayist, educator, and human-rights advocate.

[6] Kowit was born in Brooklyn, New York where as a young man he frequently gave poetry readings at coffee houses.

After refusing Army induction at the beginning of the Vietnam War – or as Kowit called it, "America's genocidal slaughter of the Vietnamese people" – he traveled to Mexico, Central and South America with his wife, Mary.

Kowit seems to enjoy toying with sound and rhythm, like a cat patting at a spider, and is partial to slant rhymes hidden in unruly cadences.

He folds his content into soft mouthfuls of sound ... the poems grow more delicious in their crazy daring, epitomizing Kowit's own particular sidelong, silly way of approaching the truth.