Robert Kelly, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Languages and Literature, has taught at Bard College since 1961. He founded the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts writing program in 1980, and directed it for a dozen years. He has received numerous grants and awards, including a prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and an honorary doctor of letters degree from the State University of New York. He is the author of more than 50 books of poetry (including Red Actions, a selection of poems from 1960—1993), several novels, and four collections of shorter fiction. His most recent books are Mont Blanc (a writing-through of Shelley’s eponymous poem), The Time of Voice, Runes, and The Garden of Distances, the last a collaboration with Tyrolean painter Brigitte Mahlknecht. Lapis: poems 1997—2000, will be published in winter 2003. Kelly is working on a new novel and a collection of critical and theoretical essays, as well as on Orion: Opening the Seals, a long poem whose opening section can be found in Conjunctions:35, of which he is a contributing editor.