Robert Hass was born in San Francisco in 1941.

His books of poetry include Sun Under Wood, Human Wishes, Praise, and Field Guide, which was selected by Stanley Kunitz for the Yale Younger Poets Series. He has co-translated several volumes of poetry with Czeslaw Milosz, most recently Facing the River.

Hass served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997 and is currently a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He lives in California and teaches at the University of California-Berkeley.