For the time, space, and resources required to write this book, I have many to thank.
First I am grateful to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for a fellowship which not only supported me for a year during the writing of this book, but also enabled me to enlarge its vision and scope. In that regard, I am also grateful for conversations with Edward Hirsch, president of the foundation, and an e-mail correspondence with Jack Miles, of its selection committee.
For time out of time, I am grateful for fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Study and Conference Center at Bellagio. For residencies, I am also grateful to the UCross Foundation, Medway Plantation (Bokara Legendre), and Elixir Farm (Lavinia McKinney). For hospitality, I thank my friends Roxana and Hamilton Robinson, Wendy Gimbel and Doug Liebhafsky, Christoph and Marie-Charlotte Meran, Claudia Weill and Walter Teller, and Fanny Howe. For time and a work space in the Frederick Allen Room at the New York Public Library, I am grateful to the library and to Wayne Furman, and for hospitality in London, I thank the guest house at St. Matthew’s, Westminster, Rona and Bob Kiley, and Diane Gelon and Gillian Hanna.
For their forbearance, generosity, and support during the composition of this book, I thank my colleagues in the writing programs at the New School and at the Columbia School of the Arts, especially Robert Polito, Richard Locke, Lis Harris, and Patricia O’Toole. I also thank Susan and Roger Hertog and the Columbia School of the Arts for awarding me a Hertog research assistant in 2004, and I am grateful to the remarkable Sarah Smarsh for her work in that capacity and for our many conversations. Roslyn Schloss read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions, and Tayt Harlin not only fact-checked but offered useful advice. For their thoroughness and hard work I am most grateful. Thank you as well to the New School and its president, Bob Kerrey, for extending my benefits during time off for writing. For technical help at the last minute, I thank Tanya Selvaratnam.
For important conversations, I thank Louie Crew, the Very Reverend and Mrs. James Parks Morton, the Reverend and Mrs. Ledlie Laughlin, Nona Clark, Andrew Verver, Nell Gibson, Colin Coward, Joel Gibson, John George Robinson, Daniel Webster, Frances FitzGerald, Geoffrey Kabaservice, Michael Roberts, Kirsten Grimstad, Diana Gould, Brad Gooch, Benjamin Taylor, David Leeming, Janet Kraft, Isabel Potter, Ruth Lord, Emma Black, Victoria Rue, and Robert Leleux. And last but not least, for particular friendship and support during the writing of this book, I am indebted to Marian Moore, Stanley Siegel, Carolyn Forché, Catherine Ciepiela, André Bishop, Fanny Howe, Victoria Redel, James Lapine, Wendy Gimbel, and the late Arthur Miller—thank you.
At the Wylie Agency, I thank Sarah Chalfant, Andrew Wylie, and Edward Orloff for their extended attention and encouragement. I am, of course, enormously grateful to W. W. Norton & Company, and I particularly thank my editor, Jill Bialosky, for her shrewd readings and buoyant support, and Don Rifkin and Paul Whitlatch for their marvelous attention to detail.