John Taggart is a poet and critic whose work spans volumes of poetry, including Music: Collected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), a book on Edward Hopper, and a collection of essays. A minister’s son born in Iowa in 1942, he grew up in small Indiana towns. Educated at Earlham College and the University of Chicago, he received a PhD from Syracuse University and afterward directed an arts program in the English department at Shippensburg University from 1969 until 2001. Taggart lives in the Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania.