The Vintage Book of African American Poetry

Michael Steven Harper was born in Brooklyn, New York on March 18, 1938. He received an associate of arts degree in 1959 from Los Angeles City College, a bachelor's degree in 1961 and a master's degree in 1963 from the Los Angeles State College of Applied Arts and Sciences, and a M.F.A. degree in 1963 from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He taught at Contra Costa College, Lewis and Clark College, Reed College, and California State College before he joined the English faculty at Brown University, where he remained until retiring in 2013.

During his lifetime, he published more than ten collections of poetry including History Is Your Own Heartbeat, Honorable Amendments, Debridement, Nightmare Begins Responsibility, and Dear John, Dear Coltrane. Images of Kin won the Poetry Society of America's Melville-Cane Award. He also edited The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown and Chant of Saints: A Gathering of Afro-American Literature, Art and Scholarship. He died on May 7, 2016 at the age of 78.

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