T. R. Hummer is a native of Mississippi. He earned his BA and MA from the University of Southern Mississippi and the Center for Writers and his PhD in 1980 from the University of Utah. He has served as editor of The Kenyon Review and The Georgia Review, among others, and now teaches at Arizona State University.

His publications include the poetry collections Ephemeron (LSU Press, fortchoming) The Angelic Orders (LSU, 1982), The Passion of the Right–Angled Man (University of Illinois Press, 1984), Walt Whitman in Hell (LSU, 1996), Useless Virtues (LSU, 2001), and The Infinity Sessions (LSU, 2005). He is also the author of the essay collection The Muse in the Machine: Essays on Poetry and the Anatomy of the Body Politic (University of Georgia Press, 2005).

Among his honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEA Fellowship. Hummer played saxophone in the Skinner Brothers Band and the Richmond-based jump blues band Little Ronnie and the Grand Dukes (Young and Evil, Planetary Records, 2001). He is at work on a collaborative project, Americamera, with the musician Billy Cioffi.