Gratitude to the following: Sven Birkerts, Jennifer Brice, Mary Ann Calo, Luca Caminati, Cathy Caruth, Colgate Writer’s Conference, Michael Coyle, Doris V. Cross, Donna-Lee Frieze, Robert Garland, Michael Holobosky, Mary Beth Kelly, Anne Leone, Denise Stillwaggon Leone, Matt Leone, Betty Jean Lifton, Robert Jay Lifton, Askold Melnyczuk, Angela Miller, John Naughton, Jane L.Pinchin, Eric Simonoff, Kara Rusch, The Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Chair Colgate University, Tom Sleigh, Bruce Smith, Joyce and Joe Stein and the Philibosian Family Foundation, Laura Tanner, Stewart Wallace, the Wellfleet Meetings, Jack Wheatcroft, Yaddo, Jim and Janet Balakian for Water Mill retreat; to my editor, Randy Petilos; and to Helen for many drafts.
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Chapter 1 first appeared in slightly different form as “Poetry in Hell: Primo Levi and Dante at Auschwitz” in American Poetry Review (January 2008). Chapter 2, “The Poem as History,” was given in parts as public lectures at the International Association of Genocide Scholars Auschwitz Seminar, Auschwitz, Poland (July 2007), the Colgate Writers Conference, Colgate University (June 2009), and the Wellfleet Meetings on Psychology and History (October 2010). Chapter 3 first appeared in an earlier form in AGNI 39 (1993). Chapter 4 appeared in an earlier form as the introduction to Theodore Roethke’s Far Fields (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989). Chapter 6 first appeared as “Yeghishe Charents: The Rise and Fall of a Revolutionary Poet” in American Poetry Review (January/February 1989). Chapter 7 was given, in part, as a lecture at the Colgate Writer’s Conference at Colgate University (June 2010). Chapter 8 first appeared in Art in America (February 1996). Chapter 9 was first delivered at a lecture at the conference “Armenian and Greek Culture” held at Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece (October 1994). And chapter 10 first appeared in an earlier form as the introduction to Bloody News from My Friend: Poems by Siamanto, trans. Peter Balakian and Nevart Yaghlian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996).