Noah Eli Gordon was born in Cleveland and grew up in both Ohio and Florida. He attended Bunker Hill Community College and earned a BA and an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Gordon is known for his playful, densely intertextual poetry and frequent collaborations. His many books include The Frequencies (2003); The Area of Sound Called the Subtone (2004), which won a Sawtooth Poetry Prize; Inbox (2006); Novel Pictorial Noise (2007), chosen by John Ashbery for the National Poetry Series and winner of a San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award; A Fiddle Pulled from the Throat of a Sparrow (2007); The Source (2011); The Year of the Rooster (2013); The Word Kingdom in the Word Kingdom (2015); and Is That the Sound Of A Piano Coming From Several Houses Down? (2018). His book-length collaborations include, with the poet Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Figures for a Darkroom Voice (2007). His poetry, reviews, and essays have all been widely published and anthologized.

Gordon directed Subito Press at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he was an associate professor until his passing in 2022.

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