Frank Bidart was born in Bakersfield, CA, and educated at the University of California-Riverside and Harvard.  He is the author of numerous books of poetry including Golden State (1973), The Book of the Body (1977), Desire (1997), Star Dust (2005), and Metaphysical Dog (2013). He has been honored with numerous awards, including the Wallace Stevens Award, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, and the Bobbitt Prize for Poetry. He has taught at Brandeis University and, since 1972, Wellesley College. In 2003 he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.