Scott Hightower
Scott Hightower is an American poet, teacher, and reviewer who has published five books of poetry. His third collection, Part of the Bargain, won the 2004 Hayden Carruth Award for New and Emerging Poets, and he has received a Willis Barnstone Translation Prize for a translation from Spanish.
He was born in Lampasas, Texas, the youngest child on a modest working ranch near Lometa. His sister and his brother Billie Jewel Hightower (1950–1992) became a noted painter in Texas, the Chicago area, and Florida.
Hightower studied at the University of Texas at Austin, earning a BA in communications in 1973. He earned a Master’s in teaching at Antioch College in 1977 and later completed an MFA at Columbia University in 1994, where he studied with J. D. McClatchy and was mentored by William Matthews.
His early English-language collections are filled with philosophical, idyllic meditations in the tradition of Theocritus and the Anglo-Saxon traveler-poet. Tin Can Tourist ranges from the plains of Texas to the Bronx, Rome, Istanbul, and back, exploring culture’s highs and lows. Marie Ponsot praised its blend of emotional and intellectual depth with a quiet, grounded energy. Natural Trouble continues the inheritance theme through changing landscapes and weather, and J. D. McClatchy admired its precise, adventurous style.
Part of the Bargain, Hightower’s third book, won the Hayden Carruth Award in 2004. It examines how individuals belong to communities and to a culture, blending ideas of biology, sexuality, nationality, and language to argue that poetry helps ground democracy and gives meaning to both the commonwealth and the individual.
In 2012, Hightower published Hontanares, a bilingual collection translated into Spanish by Natalia Carbajosa and issued in Madrid. The book expands his interest in the Albornoz family—statesmen, scientists, and poets—including Álvaro de Albornoz y Liminiana and Severo Ochoa de Albornoz—and connects to themes of radical thought and exile that appear in Self-evident.
Imperative to Spare, issued in 2023, has been described by poet Cynthia Hogue as a necessary volume that moves from despair to wisdom. Hightower’s poetry has been reviewed in Fogged Clarity, The Brooklyn Rail, The Journal, Manhattan Review, Coldfront Magazine, and other journals.
He teaches writing at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and lives in New York City, with time spent in Spain.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 21:08 (CET).