Carl Little holds a BA from Dartmouth College, an MFA from Columbia University and a master's from Middlebury College. Prior to joining the staff of the Maine Community Foundation, he directed the Ethel H. Blum Gallery at College of the Atlantic. In 2000 he was presented with the Acadia Arts Achievement Award in recognition of his contributions to the arts on Mount Desert Island where he lives and writes. Little is a critic and author of many art books, including The Watercolors ofJohn Singer Sargent and Edward Hopper's New England.

About Ocean Drinker:

"Carl Little looks at life from oblique angles, and in these finely-honed poems shows us glimpses of modest and surprising truth: a grandfather's old slides of naked women, perused at night by the grandson; a father awkwardly tying his tall son's tie before a funeral; the poet rolling the word "elvers" around on his tongue. Maine light, Maine rock, Maine ocean provide the setting for many of these poems which have the nuance and integrity of that landscape. Little's is an art of deep wit, not mere cleverness, and of wryly resonant understatement and emotional control. Ocean Drinker is a book of fine craft and dignity."
—Rosanna Warren

"Carl Little's poetry begins in the love, humor, surprise and radiance of the family circle and extends outward in waves of metaphor till everything in the poet's eye is touched with life. In a time so crowded that most of us squint and narrow our vision, the poems of Ocean Drinker teach us the delight and wonder of an undeleted world."
—William Carpenter