...Surprising numbers of adults vehemently deny their double nature as fur-bearing critters with vestigial claws on hands and feet-animals who talk and think, yet who, like our mammalian kin, also copulate and give suck. In a nutshell, some people simply can't stand the facts of life. That's why they throw hissy fits at the mention of evolution....

American poet and essayist. Born in Jacksonville, Illinois, Saner earned a B.A. at St. Norbert College in Wisconsin. After serving in the U.S. army during the Korean War, he studied at the University of Illinois and the University of Florence in Italy. Saner began teaching creative writing at the University of Colorado at Boulder soon after returning to the United States and retired after thirty-seven years in the classroom. His poems have appeared in, by his own count, 140 journals, and he has authored many collections since his first volume, Climbing into the Roots (1976), won the first Walt Whitman Award conferred by the Academy of American Poets. His best-known book is The Four-Cornered Falcon: Essays on the Interior West and the Natural Scene (1983); his latest essay collection is The Dawn Collector: On My Way to the Natural World (2005). See also pw.org/content/reg_saner_1.