This audio was recorded at Dia:Chelsea on November 18, 2013 as part of Dia's Readings in Contemporary Poetry series.

Ron Padgett was born in 1942 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His poetry books include How to Be Perfect (Coffee House Press, 2008); You Never Know (Coffee House Press, 2002); Great Balls of Fire (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1969; rev. ed., Coffee House Press, 1990); His Collected Poems is forthcoming from Coffee House Press in November 2013. His most recent translation, with Wang Ping, is Flash Cards by Yu Jian (Zephyr Press, 2010). In 2012, Padgett edited The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard for the Library of America, and his collection of poems, How Long (Coffee House Press, 2011), was a 2012 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Padgett lives in New York City. Ron Padgett and Thomas Devaney read that evening.

To hear Vincent Katz's introduction to Ron Padgett, please click here.