Mark Yakich's first book of poems, UNRELATED INDIVIDUALS FORMING A GROUP WAITING TO CROSS, was a winner of the 2003 National Poetry Series and was published by Penguin Books. He is an assistant professor of English at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant. “Mark Yakich is an original... In the unabashedly unwieldy title and in each poem, there are no borders drawn between the commonplace and the metaphysical. There are journeys, crossings, and departures—all evocative of the loneliness, alienation, and desire for identity with another (person or place), which, formalized, makes this work recognizable as art of a very high order." —James Galvin, Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment