These essays, with the exception of “Frost’s Woods,” were first published in the following journals. To their editors I owe a debt.
Hopkins Review: “Longfellow’s Hiawatha, Carroll’s Hiawatha: The Name and Nature of Parody”; Hudson Review: “Dickinson’s Nerves”; New Criterion: “Frost’s Horse, Wilbur’s Ride,” “Justice’s Henry James,” “Pound’s Metro,” “Shakespeare’s Rotten Weeds, Shakespeare’s Deep Trenches”; Parnassus: “Williams’s Wheelbarrow,” “Shelley’s Wrinkled Lip, Smith’s Gigantic Leg”; Salmagundi: “Lowell’s Skunk, Heaney’s Skunk”; Yale Review: “Keats’s Chapman’s Homer.”
I owe thanks to many people who went out of their way to answer obscure questions: [Shelley] Alex Chanter (Victoria and Albert Museum), June Holmes (Bewick Society); [Lowell] Stephen Axelrod, Henry Erhard, Grzegorz Kosc; [Keats] Duncan Wu; [Shakespeare] John Kerrigan, Christopher Ricks, Gary Taylor; [Pound] Melanie Brkich, Julian Pepinster; [Williams] Sharon Dunn, Reverend Ray Frazier, Rod Leith, Lauren Puchowski; [Dickinson] Richard Brantley, John Cech, Marianne Curling (Amherst Historical Society), Tim Engels (Brown University Library), Kenneth Kidd, U. C. Knoepflmacher, Ruslyn Vear (Amherst Town Library), Jack Zipes; [Frost] Karen Bennett (University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension), Richard Holmes (Derry Town Historian), Mark Richardson, Barbara Rimkunas (Exeter Historical Society), Suzanne Stillman, Trudy Van Houten. I have depended, not just on the kindness of strangers, but on the kindness of friends.