J. (Joseph) T. Barbarese was born in Philadelphia on May 18, 1948. He attended Franklin and Marshall College, Duke University, and Temple University, where he earned his doctorate. He taught writing at Friends Select School in Philadelphia, as well as at Rutgers University in New Jersey. As of 2007, he had written four books of poetry: Under the Blue Moon (1985), New Science (1989), A Very Small World (2005), and The Black Beach (2005), the collection in which “Walk Your Body Down” is found. Black Beach won Barbarese the Vassar Miller Prize.

In addition to his poetry, Barbarese also wrote short stories, essays, and literary reviews, which appeared in various magazines, including the Atlantic, Story Quarterly, Journal of Modern Literature, New York Times, and Georgia Review. Barbarese also translated Euripides’s plays, which appeared in Euripides 4, Ion, Children of Heracles, The Madness of Heracles, Iphigenia in Tauris, Orestes (1999). He also...