Ronald Wallace is the author of seven books of poetry, including: Long for This World: New and Selected Poems; The Uses of Adversity; Time's Fancy; and People and Dog in the Sun. His works of literary criticism include: God Be with the Clown: Humor in American Poetry; The Last Laugh: Form and Affirmation in the Contemporary American Comic Novel; and Henry James and the Comic Form. Wallace is Halls-Bascom Professor of English, Felix Pollak Professor of Poetry, and codirector of the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.