Collected Poems

Alan Stephens was born December 19, 1925, in Greeley, Colorado. He grew up on the family farm there, and served in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Thanks to the G.I. Bill, he attended Colorado State Teacher's College (now the University of Northern Colorado), the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Denver, and the University of Missouri. He received bachelor's and master's degrees from DU, and a Ph.D. from Missouri.Stephens taught English at Arizona State University from 1954 to 1960, with a year at Stanford on a fellowship (1956-1957). He joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1960 and remained there until his retirement in 1989, except for a year at DU (1967-1968). He was a founding faculty member of the College of Creative Studies at UCSB.He was married for 60 years to Frances Stephens. They raised three sons. He died July 21, 2009, at home in Santa Barbara.