Through six earlier books Karl Kirchwey has rewarded readers with poems of great musicality, visual richness, and historical resonance. Stumbling Blocks: Roman Poems represents a culmination of his ""formal mastery"" - an honour often too loosely bestowed in contemporary American poetry, but one Kirchwey thoroughly earns.

KARL KIRCHWEY is the author of six previous collections of poetry: A Wandering Island; Those I Guard; The Engrafted Word; At the Palace of Jove; The Happiness of This World: Poetry and Prose; and Mount Lebanon. His essays and reviews have been widely published. He has also written a verse play based on the Alcestis of Euripides and a translation of Paul Verlaine, Poems under Saturn. From 2010 to 2013 he served as Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome.