Donald Justice was born in Miami and educated at Miami University, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Iowa. He taught for a number of years first at Iowa and then at the University of Florida. Several important contemporary poets—including Jorie Graham, Mark Strand, and Charles Wright—were among his students. His career began with witty and technically exquisite poems like “The Wall” and “An Old Fashioned Devil,” then moved to a reflection on his own work in “Early Poems,” and finally moved to the more open and meditative style of “Absences” and “Presences.”