Jerome Rothenberg was born in 1931 in New York to a family Polish-Jewish descent. Poet, translator, anthologist and the founder of the ethnopoetic method. From 1953 to 1955, he served in the U.S. army in Mainz, Germany after which he returned to America and graduated from the Columbia University. Rothenberg taught visual arts and literature at the University of California in San Diego. He authored and edited over 70 books including poetry collections of his own, literary translations, various anthologies, literary reviews, essays etc. In 1974 he was awarded with the Guggenheim Fellowship for achievements in literature, he also received the American Book Award (1982, 2010, 2014).