American poet, journalist, and teacher who received the Golden Rose Award for a 1921 poetry collection entitled Ships in the Harbor. His other collections include Poems of a Lifetime and Poems: 1920-1945.
He attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and went on to work for a decade for the Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky.
He was inspired by Maltese Falcon author Dashiell Hammett.
He grew up in Elkton, Kentucky. He taught high school in New Jersey before accepting a faculty position at Amherst College (Massachusetts) in 1924.
He was born in the same year as fellow American poet Joyce Kilmer.