Polito is from Boston, Massachusetts, and lives in New York City. He received a Ph.D. in English and American Language and Literature from Harvard University.

Polito is working on Detours: Seven Noir Lives, a nonfiction book. He is editing an anthology of Manny Farber’s film and art criticism.

Doubles (a book of poems); A Reader's Guide to James Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover; and At Titan's Breakfast: Three Essays on Byron's Poetry. Editor of the Library of America volumes Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s and Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s. Essays and poems in Best American Poetry, Walk on the Wild Side: American Urban Poetry Since 1975, O.K. You Mugs, and Communion; also in The New Yorker, The Yale Review, ArtForum, BOMB, Black Clock, Verse, Pequod, Open City, Ploughshares, New York Times Book Review, and VLS, among other magazines. Fellowships from the Ingram Merrill and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundations. Contributing editor of BOMB and The Boston Review. Has taught at Harvard, Wellesley, and New York University.