Pattiann Rogers was born on March 23, 1940, in Joplin, Missouri, to Irene C. and William Tall. Her family was relatively poor, supported by what money her father could make as an inventor. When she was twenty, she married John Robert Rogers. After earning a bachelor of arts degree in English literature from the University of Missouri in 1961, she worked as an English teacher to support him through graduate school. He became a geophysicist, providing a connection to science that can be seen throughout Rogers's poetry. After the birth of the couple's first son, Rogers stayed home to take care of him; another son soon followed. While her family always took first priority, it was while she was raising her children that Rogers developed her poetry career.

Rogers's first published book of poetry was The Expectation of Light, published in 1981, the same year that she received her master...