Poems selected from Fishing with Blood and Do Not Peel the Birches are reprinted by permission of Purdue University Press.
Poems selected from Breathing In, Breathing Out are reprinted by permission of Anhinga Press.
Poems selected The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives © 2004 by Fleda Brown. Used by the permission of The Permission Company, Inc., on behalf of Carnegie Mellon University Press, www.cmu.edu/universitypress.
Poems selected from Loon Cry: New and Selected Michigan Poems are reprinted by permission of the author.
Poems selected from Reunion © 2007 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press.
Poems selected from No Need of Sympathy © 2013 by Fleda Brown. Used by the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
The author is grateful to the print and online editors in whose publications the reprinted poems in this volume originally appeared, sometimes in different versions with different titles.
The selected poems were first published in Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, Ariel, Arts & Letters, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cortland Review, Crab Orchard Review, Croton Review, Dunes Review, Georgia Review, Image, Indiana Review, Iowa Review, Kestrel, Kenning, Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Mid-American Review, Miramar, New Virginia Review, Ocho, Paterson Review, Poet Lore, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Southern Humanities Review, Southern Poetry Review, Southern Review, Tar River Review, West Branch, and Yarrow.
“Einstein on Mercer Street” was first performed as a piece for orchestra and voice by the New Music Ensemble, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2002. Composer: Kevin Puts. It is available on the CD titled Against the Emptiness from New Dynamic Records.
“If I Were a Swan” was set to music by Kevin Puts and premiered by the Austin, Texas–based chorus Conspirare, under the direction of Craig Hella Johnson, on September 27, 2012. It is available on CD, performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
I would also like to acknowledge The Devil’s Child, the one book not included in this collection. Its continuous narrative and the tone of the book made it impossible to fit among these other poems. Nonetheless, I would like to thank Kathryn Harris and the real Barbara for making that difficult book possible.
Thanks also to the editors of the following journals in which the new poems were first published: “5 Moons,” “Edward Hopper’s Automat,” “Unfurl,” Southern Poetry Review; “Elegance,” “Mute Swan,” New Ohio Review; “The Muskrat,” Antioch Review; “Lesson,” Bellevue Review; “Reading the Smithsonian Magazine,” Michigan Quarterly Review; “The Bar Mitzvah,” “Every Day I Touch Things,” “Tiny Fish,” Image; “Poem for Record Players,” Crab Orchard Review; “The Sex Life of Anacondas,” “Snoring,” Georgia Review; “Bees,” If Bees Are Few: A Hive of Bee Poems, University of Minnesota Press; “July 20, 1944,” Miramar; “On a Day That Bombs,” “Protection,” New England Review; “Refrigerator,” New Letters; “Asian Carp,” Pleiades; “Taxol,” Numero Cinq; “Cancer Support Group with Painting by Monet,” “Speed,” Prairie Schooner; “The War,” Cortland Review; “Getting Free,” “View from Space,” “Pike,” Southern Review.
My deep gratitude to Ted Kooser, who appreciated my work enough to invite me to put this volume together. To my faithful pal Sydney Lea, who’s been reading my poems for decades now. To my Traverse City poet friends, especially Teresa Scollon, Anne Marie Oomen, Jennifer Steinorth, and Catherine Turnbull. To my geographically scattered writer friends, especially those at Rainier Writing Workshop. To my family. And to my beloved husband: first reader and first friend, to whom this book is dedicated.