John Hoppenthaler is the author of three books of poetry, Lives of Water, Anticipate the Coming Reservoir, and Domestic Garden, all with Carnegie Mellon University Press. With Kazim Ali, he has co-edited Jean Valentine: This World Company (Michigan UP, 2012). His poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s, Southern Review, and elsewhere. He currently edits A Poetry Congeries at Connotation Press: An Online Artifact. For nine years he served as Personal Assistant to Toni Morrison.