Lynda Hull was born on December 5, 1954, in Newark, New Jersey. She received her B.A. from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and her M.A. from Johns Hopkins University. Her books of poetry include The Only World: Poems (HarperPerennial, 1995, edited with a foreword by David Wojahn); Star Ledger: Poems (1991), which won the 1991 Carl Sandburg Award and the 1990 Edwin Ford Piper Award; and Ghost Money (1986), which won the Juniper Prize. Hull served as a Poetry Editor at the journal Crazyhorse. She taught English at Indiana University, De Paul University, and Vermont College. She was the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council; she also received four Pushcart Prizes. David St. John wrote that "of all the poets of my generation, Lynda Hull remains the most heartbreaking, merciful, and consoling." Lynda Hull died in an automobile accident in 1994.

About Collected Poems:

"Measured experience informs these poems, as Lynda Hull’s voice comes alive again and again, line to line and image to image…. Because Hull has troubled the waters, her poetry makes us truer to ourselves and those around us. Each image is a beam in a persistent searchlight that penetrates."
—Yusef Komunyakaa

"Lynda Hull (1954–1994) was perhaps the most intensely lyrical poet of her generation. Her charged, sensuous music—influenced by jazz and the densely wrought sonics of Hart Crane—is wedded to an indelible vision. In her broken, late—century American landscape of ruined cities, a desperate beauty flashes among the wreckage of individual lives."
—Mark Doty