He graduated from Southern Illinois University Carbondale with an MFA in Creative Writing. He has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Workshop, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation. His most recent book of poetry, The Big Smoke, was published by Penguin in 2013 and is about Jack Johnson. It was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize and won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His work has appeared in literary journals and magazines including American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and in anthologies including From the Fishouse and The Best American Poetry 2010. He teaches literature and creative writing at Indiana University. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana with his wife, poet Stacey Lynn Brown, and their daughter.