Charles Wright is often ranked as one of the best American poets of his generation. Born in 1935 in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee, Wright attended Davidson College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; he also served four years in the U.S. Army, and it was while stationed in Italy that Wright began to read and write poetry. Wright’s recent books include: Outtakes (2010); Sestets: Poems (2009); Littlefoot: A Poem (2008); Scar Tissue (2007); The Wrong End of the Rainbow (2005); and Buffalo Yoga (2004). His two volumes of criticism are: Halflife (1988), and Quarter Notes (1995). He has translated the work of Dino Campana and Eugenio Montale. Wright, the Souder Family Professor of English, emeritus, at the University of Virginia, has received numerous awards during his career, including the National Book Award, the PEN Translation Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Griffin Prize, the American Book Award in Poetry, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. In 2014, he was named Poet Laureate of the United States.