ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to acknowledge everyone who ever stuck out their hand to me at a poetry reading or an AA meeting; recovery is contagious. If no one were listening, no one would speak, and each of us would go to our grave keeping the secret that might have saved someone else’s life.

But for this particular volume, special thanks to the hard-nosed cadre who stayed with me from the first scatter-shot everyone’s-invited open camp to the barely recognizable distillation of what I hope were our best insights, intuitions, and wild-ass guesses at what some hypothetical God of our dubious understanding might be trying to tell us. Thank you,

Wess Mongo Jolley

Jodie K

Bill Mac

Carol McCarthy

Ryk McIntyre

Mary Pinkoski

Jon Sands

David R. Surette

And special thanks to Derrick Brown and Lea C. Deschenes. Special circumstances around the publishing of this particular volume have compelled me to ask for special treatment in a number of areas, and they have met me far more than halfway on every occasion.

Jack McCarthy