I wish to thank the editors of the following magazines: The Awl, Harper’s, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Rumpus, Slate, and WSQ (Women’s Studies Quarterly).
Enormous thanks to the MacDowell Colony, for exquisite hospitality, beauty, magic. And gratitude to the Corporation of Yaddo, for generosity, time, space. This book wouldn’t exist without residencies in both places, and was in large part written in MacDowell’s New Jersey and Barnard studios and in Yaddo’s West House. Much work was accomplished thanks to the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation at Brown University. Thank you, American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Academy of American Poets.
And with personal gratitude:
To Deborah Landau, Paul Muldoon, Hilton Als, Meghan O’rourke and the Pretendettes, Marie Howe, Mark Doty, James Richardson, Susan Wheeler, J.D. McClatchy, Jayne Anne Phillips, Alice Elliott Dark, Rebecca Horne.
To Ann Hood, whose work and compassionate conversation gave me the courage to write the title poem. (Though she didn’t realize it and therefore shouldn’t be held responsible for its failures.)
This book is especially indebted to the beloved Members of Team Cal: Sami Akbari, Imelda Laborce, the Roosevelt School, Dr. Joseph Levy, Dr. Elizabeth Fiorino, Huck Ho, Tami Gaines, Robyn Uslip, Lindsay Orcutt, Lauren Joyce, and my family. And to the special moms who have really been there: Molly Peryer, Leonie Lewis, Eliza Factor, Aine Carroll, and Jamie Mirabella.
To Dr. Andrew S. Gardner, for Simone.
To Craig. I just love being with you. Even here, on the acknowledgments page, I am glad to be talking to you. You make me happy, and you make our kids happy. That’s all the kinds of happiness I need in this life, my love.