Robert Mezey was born in 1935 in
Philadelphia. He attended
Kenyon College and served in the
U.S. Army before receiving a B.A. degree from the
University of Iowa in 1959.
Mezey found work as a
probation officer, advertising
copywriter, and
social worker. He did graduate study at
Stanford and began teaching
English at
Case Western Reserve University in 1963.
Mezey was poet-in-residence for a year at
Franklin and Marshall College. He then joined the English department of
California State University,
Fresno, spent three years at the
University of Utah, and settled in 1976 at
Pomona College in
Claremont, California.
Mezey won the
Lamont Award for
The Lovemaker in 1960. He has published many
poetry books, coedited
Naked Poetry (1969), and helped
translate Poems from the Hebrew (1973). In 1987, his book of poems,
Evening Wind, was published.