Daniel J. Langton was born in Paterson, New Jersey and raised in East Harlem with his brothers and sister. He was a scholarship boy at both St. Paul's and Hayes, finishing his formal education with a doctorate from Berkeley. He served in the Army Air Corps between high school and college, and it was in college that he met Eve, who changed everything. They married, went on with college together, had a son, lived in France, "two small people, without dislike or suspicion," as Pound said.

Dan read Paterson and sought out William Carlos Williams, who encouraged him to write poetry. There were years of apprenticeship, but then poems appeared in the Nation, Poetry, the Paris Review, the Harvard Advocate, the Atlantic Monthly, the Iowa Review, the TLS and places like that, and to win the London Prize, the Devins Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award and others.

"There were four intensely happy years teaching English at San Rafael High School in California, then I was asked to teach at San Francisco State University, an offer I could not refuse. Now I try to keep my life as serene and dull as possible, and to be at my desk when the Muse drops by."