Born in Fukuoka, Japan, and raised in Virginia, poet Henri Cole grew up in a household where French, Armenian, and English were spoken. He earned a BA at the College of William and Mary, an MA at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and an MFA at Columbia University. From 1982 to 1988 he served as the executive director of the Academy of American Poets, and he was poetry editor of the New Republic from 2010 to 2014. Cole has taught at Ohio State University, Harvard University, and Yale University. He lives in Boston and currently teaches at Claremont McKenna College.