Adam Kirsch is a poet and crit­ic whose writ­ing appears reg­u­lar­ly in The New York­er and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. He is the author of three pre­vi­ous col­lec­tions of poet­ry and sev­er­al books of crit­i­cism and biog­ra­phy, and has received a Guggen­heim Fel­low­ship. An edi­tor at the Wall Street Jour­nal, he has taught at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty and Sarah Lawrence Col­lege. He was born in Los Ange­les and now lives in New York City.