Toby Olson began writing poetry while in high school and he continued writing it while in the U.S. Navy, and later as a student at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He received a Master's Degree at Long Island University in New York, after which he taught Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia. His first novel was The Life of Jesus, and this was followed by eleven books of fiction and many books of poetry. He considers himself a poet who also writes fiction, and now, in his mid-eighties, he continues in the writing of both arts.

Though there were poems written in the years between 1983 and 94, most of his efforts in those eleven years were spent writing fiction. Four novels were published in that time, and come 1994 he found he had enough poems for a book, Unfinished Building, and while he continued with fiction, he also found he was writing poetry, and since then he has managed to work at both arts. This volume, including the aforementioned book, contains the collections Human Nature (New Directions), Darklight and Death Sentences (both from Shearman Books), and See / Saw, published here for the first time.