Lisa Jarnot was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1967. After studying with the poet Robert Creeley at the University of Buffalo, she earned her MFA from Brown University. Her poetry is known for its startling yet inviting aesthetic. Jarnot has commented, “I think poems are always collage on some level. . . . Collage is a way to force awareness out of the random flow of information that’s constantly bombarding us.” In addition to the collagelike technique of juxtaposing, Jarnot also frequently employs repetition, as in “Poem Beginning with a Line by Frank Lima,” which reviewer Patrick Pritchett has described as “[t]he poem as a set of Chinese boxes, the word nested inside the further word, its double and its mirror and shadow.”

Jarnot is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Night Scenes (Flood Editions, 2008), and her biography of San Francisco poet Robert Duncan is forthcoming in 2010. She lives in Sunnyside, New York.