Ed Ochester is the editor of the Pitt Poetry Series and is a member of the core faculty of the Bennington MFA Writing Seminars. He has published seven books of poems, as well as eight limited editions, and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the George Garrett Award from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, and the "artist of the year" award from the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Recent poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Agni, Boulevard, Nerve Cowboy, Great River Review, Gettysburg Review, and other magazines. Poems of his were selected for Best American Poems 2007 and 2013.

Other poems by Ed Ochester in Verse Daily:

Books by Ed Ochester:

Other poems on the web by Ed Ochester:
Five poems
"What the Frost Casts Up"
Five poems
Two poems
"Pocahontas"
Two poems
"Dreaming About My Father"

Ed Ochester According to Wikipedia.

About Sugar Run Road:

"I’m always scolding Ed for not stepping into the front ranks of American poets, where he belongs, till finally I realize that A. it’s not up to him and B. he’s already there. I could praise his plain speech, his tenderness and loyalty, his incredible memory, his creation of poetic world to draw sustenance from, his devotion to the local, his deep and ancient values, disguised as rebellion and satire, but I want to praise the mystery that is at the heart of his poems, how he can create beauty out of violence, waste and bad rhetoric we are all surrounded by, not unlike the farmers of New Jersey who planted their tomatoes in the raw sewage being disgorged from the giant pipes where the Giants now play football; the best tomatoes his Uncle Frank ate. He has a love of complexity but he dislikes confusion and obscurity. Finally, he’s a poet—and there are very few of them—who brings wisdom to his work. I want to praise in particular 'Myer Country Motel,' 'Hambone,' 'Ancient Music,' 'Hi Gertrude,' 'September Rain,' and 'For Britt.' This is an amazing book."
—Gerald Stern

"How hilariously and truly Ed Ochester puts our culture and world in perspective! Biting, humble, and wise, his gruff/tender poems zero in on the irony in everything. He has a profound sense of history, and of what poetry adds to our lives, the many hells poetry and art provide antidotes for."
—Amy Gerstler

"How often do you read a book of poetry that is first and foremost enjoyable? Ed Ochester opens Sugar Run Road by praising Pittsburgh's 'deep grammar and inner mystery' (a chuckle in itself) and ends with his wife 'feeding sparrows / in winter which God doesn't do too well.' In between, as a practical Romantic, he romps through rich anecdotes and meditations on poets and poetry, family, American history, work, war, Bach and Mozart, Hemingway and the Emperor Nero, and much more. Ochester's love of the art of poetry, married to his love of the common material world, gives birth to serious fun and wisdom. I'm so happy to have this book."
—Alicia Ostriker