Author of ten books of poetry, Major was a 1999 finalist for the National Book Award for Configurations: New and Selected Poems 1958-1998. He is a contributor to more than a hundred periodicals and anthologies, including several Norton's. He has served as literary judge for the National Endowment for the Arts, National Book Awards, and many state and cultural arts agencies. He has read his poetry at the Guggenheim Museum, the Folger Theater, in hundreds of universities, theaters, and cultural centers in the United States and Europe. In Yugoslavia he represented the United States in 1975 at the International Poetry Festival. He is also editor of anthologies widely used in university classes. Clarence Major teaches American literature at the University of California, Davis.