Douglas Crase was born in 1944 in Battle Creek, Michigan, raised on a nearby farm, and educated at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. A former speechwriter, he was described in the Times Literary Supplement as the unusual case of a contemporary poet whose most public, expansive voice is his most authentic. His work has been widely anthologized and he has received a Witter Bynner Award, Whiting Writers' Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations for both his poetry and essays. He lives in New York and Carley Brook, Pennsylvania.