This book contains most of the poems written in the past forty years that I wish to stand by. It begins with a volume of new poems—those written in the past decade—called West Mountain Epilogue. Most of the poems from The Art of Subtraction (2005), House of Days (1998), Town Life (1988), and Anthracite Country (1982) are here as well, though I have excluded Singing in Time (1972), my first volume, published in Scotland when I was a graduate student. In a few instances, with the poems previously published in volume form, I have changed a word or phrase, added a line, altered punctuation slightly, or, in two instances, altered a title.
I would like to thank the editors of the following publications, where some of these poems first appeared: Agni, The American Scholar, The Atlantic, Boston Review, Chicago Review, The Dark Horse, The Florida Review, The Georgia Review, Graham House Review, Harper’s, The Hudson Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Lowestoft Chronicle, Michigan Quarterly Review, Miramar, The Missouri Review, Ontario Review, Oxford Poetry, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Partisan Review, Poetry, PN Review, Plume, The New Republic, Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, Scottish International, Smartish Pace, South Atlantic Quarterly, Tar River Poetry, Verse, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Yale Review.