David Lehman is the editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2006). He has written six collections of poems: When a Woman Loves a Man (2005), The Evening Sun (Scribner, 2002), The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry (2000), Valentine Place (1996), Operation Memory (1990), and An Alternative to Speech (1986). In addition, he collaborated with James Cummins to produce a book of sestinas entitled Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man (2005). His books of criticism include The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (Doubleday, 1998), which was named a "Book to Remember 1999" by the New York Public Library; The Big Question (1995); The Line Forms Here (1992); and Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man (1991). His study of detective novels, The Perfect Murder (1989), was nominated for an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.