acknowledgments

the following poems originally appeared in the following journals:

Agni: "a small number"

The Antioch Review: "six apologies, lord"

can we have our ball back?: "a dry death," "this is the kind of poem i'm

done writing, or, a small pang in spring/' "o great slacker"

The Canary: "keep some stuff for yourself," "aloft in a tangerine cloud"

Conduit: "moorings far faster," "notes toward the ablation of the soul"

FENCE: "poem for my #*th birthday," "she (as sonnet)"

Harvard Review: "a new philosophy of composition, or, how to ignore the non-reasoning creature capable of speeech perched outside your bathroom window," "dis-spelt"

LIT: "to dante and cavalcanti and you," "il penseroso and 1'allegro: inverted and dubbed," "quain"

The Paris Review: "sweet reader, flanneled and hilled," "small quilled poem with no taste for spring"

Ploughshares: "the unbosoming"

Post Road: "the lais of long lost days," "stripped from the waist up, love"

Tin House: "the true repertory of the wrack and redemption of sir olena kalytiak davis," "you art a scholar horatio, speak to it," "poem convincing you to leave your wife," "to love"

Western Humanities Review: "if you are asked"

Verse: "dear abiah," "in the clear long after," "may be you are like me: scared and awake"



"six apologies, lord" was reprinted in Best American Poetry 2000 and The Pushcart Prize XXV: Best of the Small Presses 2001.



"sweet reader, flanneled and tulled" was reprinted in Best American Poetry 2001 and The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology, in which also appeared "a small number," "in the clear long after," and "a new philosophy of composition, or, how to ignore the non-reasoning creature capable of speeech perched outside your bathroom window."



thanks askold, david, andrew, heather, michael, jim, rob (!) . .. and to all the other kind blind editors.



i am indebted (should be indentured) to the macdowell colony, thank you for my house in the woods full (yet lovely empty) of doppelgängers and fire.



avgustyn! olyana!



and, finally, jim.