American poet and poet laureate, Daniel Hoffman, is considered by many a latter-day Romantic, in the tradition of William Wordsworth. His Romanticism is perhaps best discovered in his nature poetry, and his youthful spirit has been acknowledged from the time he began to write until the present. His Romantic approach to poetry is further enhanced by his physical appearance. Some people claim he bears a striking resemblance to the American Romantic, Edgar Allen Poe.

Hoffman was born in New York City and completed his entire higher education at Columbia University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, and a Ph.D. Before embarking on his education, he served in World War II, as part of the Army Air Corps. He did not see action; rather, he was based stateside, working as a technical writer and editor of an aeronautical research journal. While he was a doctoral candidate he published his first poetry collection, entitled An Armada of Thirty Whales.

This early effort drew the attention of W.H. Auden, who chose to include Hoffman in the prominent Yale Series of Younger Poets. Over the course of his long life, Hoffman continued to publish ten books of poetry, seven critical works, and a memoir. He has also enjoyed a long teaching career, holding positions at Columbia, Swarthmore College, and the University of Pennsylvania. He held the Pennsylvania position for a number of years, retiring as the Felix Schelling Professor of English Emeritus.

He currently holds the position chancellor emeritus of the Academy of American Poets. Additionally, for ten years he held the rather unique position of Poet in Residence for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. That position included the administration of the American Poets' Corner. Among his numerous accolades and awards for his work, Hoffman is a recipient of the Hazlett Memorial Award, the Arthur Rense Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Hoffman's personal life has been equally successful. He and his wife, Elizabeth McFarland, were married for fifty-seven years, until her death in 2005. She was also a poet and the poetry editor for Ladies' Home Journal magazine. In 2005, Hoffman was a named plaintiff in the Authors Guild vs. Google case. The plaintiffs sought to prevent the search engine website from making available a complete, searchable index of all existing books.