Called “a consummate poet” by Robert Creeley, Bernadette Mayer is a prolific poet, her first book published at the age of twenty-three. For many years Mayer lived and worked on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where she and Vito Acconci edited the journal 0 to 9 from 1972–74 and where she served as the director of St. Mark’s Poetry Project from 1980–84. Mayer mixes prose poems, pastorals, sonnets, epigrams, and dream catalogues to create an unruly but joyous oeuvre—in her words: “I write unbalanced poetry.” She is the author of numerous books and has received grants and awards from PEN American Center, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art, the NEA, and the Academy of American Poets.