Michael Van Walleghen is a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He won the Lamont Award for More Trouble with the Obvious, a Pushcart Prize, and two National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowships. His previous books include The Wichita Poems, Blue Tango, Tall Birds Stalking, and The Last Neanderthal. His poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Hudson Review, The Kenyon Review, Southern Review, and other highly respected journals.