Carolyn Kizer is the author of eight books of poetry including Cool Calm & Collected (2000), Harping On: Poems 1985-1995 (1996), The Nearness of You: Poems for Men (1986), and Yin (1984), which won a Pulitzer Prize. She is a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and she served as the first director of the Literature Program at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1966-1970.