Thylias Moss grew up the only child of doting parents in Cleveland, Ohio, met her future husband at age sixteen, and--though she grew up in working-class surroundings--has spent most of her adult life in the world of college English departments. Her later poetry collections have displayed a more relaxed state of mind, but Moss's early work is characterized by almost unremitting portraits of bitterness, anger, and despair.

Moss first won a poetry prize in 1978 for "Coming of Age in Sandusky." Her poems were collected for publication in 1983 as Hosiery Seams on a Bowlegged Woman, which was commissioned by Alberta Turner and Leonard Trawick of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Six years later came Pyramid of Bone, a volume written at the request of the University of Virginia's Charles Rowell. The book was a first runner-up in the National Book Critics Circle Award for 1989, and earned Moss praise...