Allen West was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1930 and came to the U.S. with his family after the 1941 invasion of Greece by Germany. Educated at Philips Academy and Princeton University, he served three years in the U.S. Army and received a PhD in chemistry from Cornell University in 1960. He taught at Williams College and Lawrence University until 1994. In 1992, West was a runner-up for the 1992 Grolier Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in many journals including Passager, Comstock Review, and Salamander.