He received his BA from Harvard College. Among his more than twenty books of poetry are Girly Man (University of Chicago Press, 2006), With Strings (2001), Republics of Reality: 1975–1995 (2000), Dark City (1994), Rough Trades (1991), The Nude Formalism (1989), Stigma (1981), Legend (with Bruce Andrews, Steve McCaffery, Ron Silliman, Ray DiPalma, 1980), and Parsing (1976). Currently, he is Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.