Stanley Moss was born in Woodhaven, New York on 21 June 1925, and died on Friday 5 July in New City, N.Y., at the age of 99. He was educated at Trinity College and Yale University, and he served in the US Navy during World War II. After the war he worked at Botteghe Oscure and taught English in Rome and Barcelona. His first book of poems, The Wrong Angel, was published in 1966, and since then published The Skull of Adam (1979), The Intelligence of Clouds (1989), Asleep in the Garden (1997), A History of Color (2003), Songs of Imperfection (2005), New and Selected Poems (2006), Rejoicing (2009), No Tear is Commonplace (2013), It's About Time (2015), Abandoned Poems (2017) and Almost Complete Poems (2017). He is translated into German by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, into Chinese by Fu Hao, and into Spanish by Valerie Mejer.

Moss worked as an editor at New Directions, New American Library, Bookweek, New York Herald Tribune and New American Review. In 1977, he founded Sheep Meadow Press, a non-profit publishing company that publishes poetry and belles lettres. He made his living as a private art dealer, largely in Spanish and Italian Old Masters. He lived in Clinton Corners, New York.