Assembling a book of letters is a way of reimagining or reconstructing a life, and, like constructing an actual life, it requires many participants. Although I edited this collection, I did not work alone on it. The following individuals provided letters that I could not include in this selection as well as leads to other friends and correspondents of Amy Clampitt: Helen Korn Atlas, Cecile Starr Boyajian, Julia Budenz, Sharon Chmielarz, Joan Clampitt, Eleanor Cook, Alfred Corn, William and Carole Doreski, Oriole Feshbach, Florence and Robert Fogelin, Laurence Goldstein, Joseph Goodman, Bruce Hainley, Donald Hall, Henry Hart, Sherrey Hutchison, Hugh Kennedy, James Kissane, Rozanne Knudson, Jeanne Hanff Korelitz, Peter Kybart, Linda Lovejoy, J. D. McClatchy, Doris T. Myers, Cynthia Nadelman, Alice Conger Patterson, Alice Quinn, Stephen Sandy, Grace Schulman, Kent Shaw, Susan Sheridan, Marjorie Clampitt Silletto, Warren Allen Smith, Ben Sonnenberg, Suzanne S. Szalay, John Tagliabue, Susan Tiberghien, Pauline R. Utzinger, Siri von Reis, Baron Wormser, and David Yezzi.
The staff of the Houghton Library at Harvard made copies of the letters that Clampitt wrote to Helen Vendler. For permission to reprint Clampitt’s letters to Dorothy Blake, Martha Hamilton-Phillips, David Lehman, Craig Raine, and Jennifer Snodgrass I am grateful to the Berg Collection of English and American Literature (where all of Clampitt’s papers and letters will eventually land) at the New York Public Library and to the Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.
In Dallas I profited from the aid of two graduate assistants, Diana Howard and Jacob Rinehart, who helped to decipher Clampitt’s spidery handwriting and who assembled lists for me from her address books. Once I had collected the letters, Kim Conley, Anneliese Finke, and Kim McDonald, in Lenox, served as more than capable amanuenses and proofreaders.
I did not know Amy Clampit very well when she was alive (having met her a half dozen times), but over the course of the past several years I have come to know her very well indeed. For ten months I lived in the Lenox cottage that Clampitt and her partner Harold Korn bought in 1992, two years before her death. Nestled among the Berkshire hills, with Tanglewood on one side and Edith Wharton’s the Mount on the other, I felt immediately at home and imbued with the spirit of the woman whose possessions—especially her books—surrounded me. The hospitality, warmth, and good services of the following local people increased my sense of belonging: Robert and Ilona Bell, Michael Bissaillon, Karen Chase and Paul Graubard, Peter Filkins and Susan Roeper, Tim Geller and Robin Raphaelian, and Matthew Tannenbaum.
The staff of the Berkshire Taconic Foundation, especially its director Jennifer Dowley, supported my work in more ways than I can recall. I owe special thanks to Alexcia WhiteCrow, communications expert extraordinaire, who saved me many times from computer emergencies, problems, and general anxiety.
At Columbia University Press Jennifer Crewe oversaw the entire project and Susan Pensak performed the task of copyeditor with a light but steady hand. Bonnie Costello and William Logan, the formerly anonymous readers of my proposal to the press, wrote encouraging and helpful letters that guided the book through to its completion.
My greatest debts are to Amy Clampitt’s literary executors and her family. Karen Chase, Ann Close, and Mary Jo Salter invited me to deal with this project, and as the first recipient of a grant from the Amy Clampitt Trust (established at his death by Harold Korn to promote the work of poets and scholars of poetry) I enjoyed time away from teaching as well as gracious living in the Berkshires. David and Cynthia Clampitt, Larry and Jeanne Clampitt, and Philip and Hanna Clampitt aided in many ways. To Phil Clampitt in particular I am deeply grateful for his overseeing and typing and for his providing countless kinds of information. I trust that his late sister would be happy with the results of our joint efforts.