Author of the poetry collections Jazz Funeral (Story Line Press, 2009), winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, judged by David Mason; Rhythm & Booze (University of Illinois Press, 2003), winner of the National Poetry Series, judged by Maxine Kumin, and finalist for the 2005 Poets' Prize; The Bartender Poems (Greville Press, 1991); Body and Soul (Pirogue Publishing, 1987); and Two Into One, with Ruth Adatia (Only Poetry Press, 1982). Co-editor, with Grace Bauer, of Umpteen Ways of Looking at a Possum: Critical and Creative Responses to Everette Maddox (Xavier Review Press, 2006), finalist for the 2007 SIBA Book Award in Poetry. Associate editor for 20th-century poetry of the Longman anthology of Southern literature, Voices of the American South (2005). Former George Bennett Fellow in Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy, New Orleans Writer-in-Residence at Tulane University, and Fulbright Scholar to Vilnius Pedagogical University, Lithuania. Currently Associate Professor of English at Northwestern State University of Louisiana.