William Harmon

William Harmon is a poet as well as a professor who specializes in poetry and modern literature. When he was sixteen, he left his hometown of Concord, North Carolina, where he was born in 1938, to attend the University of Chicago. After his graduation, Harmon entered a six-year service in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. Upon returning, he continued his brilliant education, earning two master's degrees and a doctorate whithin just a few years. In 1970 Harmon was appointed James Gordon Hanes Professor of the Humanities at University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), a position he holds to this day. 1970 proved to be an auspicious year for Harmon, for his first volume of poetry, entitled Treasury Holiday, was published that same year. Since then he has published four other collections of his own work, including the award-winning Mutatis Mutandis: 27 Voices; edited several literature anthologies, such as Top 500 Poems and The Oxford Book of American Light Verse; and has delivered a work of literary criticism, Time in Ezra Pound's Work. Harmon is married to Dr. Anne Harmon, who does research for public health.