John Drury teaches English and creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. His previous books include The Disappearing Town, also published by Miami University Press, The Poetry Dictionary, and Creating Poetry. The title poem of this new collection received the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review. Other poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The New Republic, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, Western Humanities Review, and other periodicals, as well as in an anthology, Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. Educated at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, John Hopkins University, and the University of Iowa, he now lives in Cincinnati with his wife, Laurie Henry, and their children, Eric and Rebecca.

About Burning the Aspern Papers:

"John Drury is an enormously accomplished poet who trusts his eye, and finds words to do justice to what he sees and feels; whose technical virtuosity is enviable, and who has found a language to suit him at home and abroad, in his own life and the lives of others. To span the very considerable gap between the blues and Henry James is a feat beyond the reach of most poets; Mr. Drury brings it off with style."
—Anthony Hecht

"John Drury's marvelous new collection is a celebration of lives both extraordinary and everyday, from the sweet moan of a delta blues singer to the high extravagance of Baron Corvo. Deft and uncanny in their psychological insights, powerful and surprising in their meditations, these poems reflect the maturing of a true formal master, a genuine virtuoso of both soul and song."
—David St. John