Alfred Castner King

Born in Leslie, Michigan, Alfred Castner King spent much of his life in Colorado and became best known as a poet of the American West. His work was published in collections including The Passing of the Storm, and Other Poems and Mountain Idylls and Other Poems, and modern library and Project Gutenberg records preserve a substantial body of his writing.

Accounts of his life agree that he lost his sight in a Colorado mining accident while working as an assayer. Rather than ending his creative life, that experience became central to his story and reputation, and he was remembered as "the blind poet of Colorado."

King's poetry is strongly shaped by mountain scenery, mining-country experience, solitude, and endurance. He died in Grand Junction, Colorado, in 1941, leaving behind poems that connect hardship with a deep love of Western landscapes.