Edward Hirsch has published seven books of poems: For the Sleepwalkers (1981), Wild Gratitude (1986), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Night Parade (1989), Earthly Measures (1994), On Love (1998), Lay Back the Darkness (2003), and, most recently, Special Orders (2008).  He has also written four prose books, including How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999), a US bestseller, and Poet’s Choice (2006).  He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature.  He taught in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston for seventeen years and now serves as president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.