John Meade Haines was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of naval officer John Meade Haines and Helen M. Donaldson Haines. After serving in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1946, he was educated in Washington, D.C., at St. Johns, at the National Art School from 1946-1947, and at American University from 1948 to 1949. In 1948 he was awarded a sculpture prize by the Corcoran Gallery. He also studied art from 1950 to 1952 at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art in New York. Haines has been twice married: to Jo Ella Hussey, an artist, on 10 October 1960, and to Jane McWhorter, a teacher, on 23 November 1970. He has four stepchildren: Anne, Blair, Karen, and Peter. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1965 and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1967. Since 1972, he has been associated with numerous universities as poet-in-residence and professor: the Universities of Alaska, Washington, Montana, Michigan, and...