Keith Wilson, professor emeritus and former New Mexico State University poet-in-residence, defines Graves Registry as a "Joint Service Operation that comes in after battles, and wars, to count the dead, identify bones, draw up a total of what has been lost." Wilson is a native New Mexican who attended the U.S. Naval Academy and served in Korea. Much of his work has been dominated by the reality and memory of war and the altered sweetness of life after it.