Poet associated with the San Francisco Renaissance and known for My Vocabulary Did This to Me, a 2009 collection that earned the American Book Award for poetry. He is also known for After Lorca.
He attended the University of Redlands and the University of California, Berkeley.
He taught a workshop at San Francisco State College that he called "Poetry as Magic."
He was openly gay. He died at the age of forty from complications of alcoholism.
He co-founded the Six Gallery, a San Francisco literary and performance venue where Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg recited his famous poem "Howl."
