H.D. (1886-1961) (the pen name of Hilda Doolittle) was born in the Moravian community of Bethlehem, PA in 1886. A major twentieth century poet with "an ear more subtle than Pound's, Moore's, or Yeats's" as Marie Ponsot writes, she was the author of several volumes of poetry, fiction, essays, and memoirs. She is perhaps one of the best-known and prolific women poets of the Modernist era. Bryher Ellerman was a novelist and H.D.'s wealthy companion.

She financed H.D.'s therapy with Freud. The American poet Nathaniel Tarn was born in Paris in 1928 and emigrated to the US in 1970, where he has lived ever since, mostly in the New Mexican desert. A leading anthropologist for many years and a pioneering translator of Pablo Neruda and Victor Segalen, Tarn, "one of the most outstanding poets of his generation" (Kenneth Rexroth), has published more than thirty books of poetry, essays, and translations--including most recently, The Beautiful Contradictions and Ins and Outs of the Forest Rivers, both available from New Directions. Forrest Gander was born in the Mojave Desert and grew up in Virginia. In addition to writing poetry, he has translated works by Coral Bracho, Alfonso D'Aquino, Pura Lopez-Colome, Pablo Neruda, and Jaime Saenz. The recipient of grants from the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim, Howard, Whiting, and United States Artists Foundations, he taught for many years as the AK Seaver Professor of Literary Arts & Comparative Literature at Brown University.

Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-1972) was born in Argentina and educated in Spanish and Yiddish. In addition to poetry, Pizarnik also wrote experimental works of theater and prose. She died of a deliberate drug overdose at the age of thirty-six.