William Page grew up in a small town in the rolling hills of Middle Tennessee. After graduation from Columbia Military Academy he worked briefly as salesman, mechanic, and assistant motion picture theater manager before serving four years in the US Air Force during the Korean War. He subsequently earned advanced degrees in Tennessee and Ohio and taught for state universities of Texas, Alabama, Ohio, and Tennessee, retiring from Memphis State University, where he was an associate professor in the creative writing program and founder of the acclaimed national literary journal THE MEMPHIS STATE REVIEW, now entitled THE PINCH. After retiring he journeyed alone, traveling broadly in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe staying in hostels and making excursions by train, bus and frequently by foot. He lives with his wife, Nancy, a retired teacher, in the Fox Meadows suburb of Memphis, Tennessee, where he continues his daily writing and revising and as a life-long biker occasionally venturing out on his motorcycle.Page’s poems have appeared widely in such journals as NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, SOUTHERN REVIEW, PLOUGHSHARES, and THE SEWANEE REVIEW, and in numerous online and print anthologies including ENSKYMENT AND THE SOUTHERN POETRY ANTHOLOGY, VOLUME VI. His work has been highly praised by eminent poets and critics, including Laurence Lieberman, James Dickey, and Diane Wakoski. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and featured on BEST OF THE NET. His collections of poems are CLUTCH PLATES (1976); THE GATEKEEPER (1982); BODIES NOT OUR OWN (1986), for which he received a Walter R. Smith Distinguished Book Award; WILLIAM PAGE GREATEST HITS 1970-2000 (2001); and most recently IN THIS MAYBE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS (2016) from FutureCycle Press Available through Amazon Books. Some COMMENTS from fellow poets are:William Page's new book IN THIS MAYBE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS looks deep below the “illusion of perfection.” In poem after well-made poem we witness “the beautiful but terrible art of listening to ourselves.” A portrait of wealthy children ends with an image of servants working in the house, and childhood itself yields as much mystery and fear as delight. Here is a book of beauty, craft and wisdom that will reward and delight its readers. --Al MaginnesWilliam Page’s powerful collection IN THIS MAYBE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS enjoins us to forget “the TV wincing in the den” and “kiss the window of a lake,” “fly above the sleeping deer in the field, the quiet birds in their woven nests.” This book’s revved engine is loss; its drive is to reclaim time in language, to map the past with images. It is designed for you, solo reader, who need and love travel. Take this breathtaking ride. --Angela BallThese poems rejoice in the small elements of the world, what William Page calls “the still fly resting/on the window.” Often these elements are “brutal/and bane,” things we are loath to confront. This poet knows, however, that they are essential to our understanding of the world. Only after considering them can one count life “a fortune.” This is the work of good poetry. Indeed, this is the greatest joy that poetry can bring us. --David Bottoms"In the poem 'Shadow' in William Page’s IN THIS MAYBE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS, "What's to become of such a willful child?" the father asked. The answer is that Page is a poet of restraint and proportion but also of truth, and when I read his poems my heart breaks and my mind expands. He has become a great poet." --Kelly Cherry“IN THIS MAYBE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS is a fine collection of poems no other poet could have written. There is a directness and willingness to give readers moments from a life that move us forward in our own lives, covering us in remarkable images, their syntax delivered in melodies heard from far away. This book is a lasting gift for readers who know William Page’s work and for others who will stumble across it in weeks and years to come– stumble and stay put, underlining image after image that carry the storylines into their readers’ memories, enriching their own recollections. I wish Jim Dickey could hold this volume in his hands; he would read it time and again, probably caught up in the welcome task of memorization.” ---Dan Masterson“A poet who can describe himself as "a champion made of dust" has put himself right in the middle of things as they actually are: the death of a friend from AIDS, a legless beggar on a wheeled platform, the elegant marathon flight of a swift, a teen friend's death in a car crash just before the Cold War and after "The bomb had bloomed its gray cloud to change / an unchangeable world." At the “Cadillac Ranch” and also behind a door to the garage with its scattered tools “in iridescent lakes without shores,” and in the family album where "there's always the one / we don't recognize" is something urgently in need of being seen for all it is, and that is exactly the service of precision and generosity that William Page’s poems offer in his new collection In This Maybe Best of All Possible Worlds.” ---Jordan Smith