Selected poems are taken from the following volumes: The Sinking of Clay City (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1979), Moon in a Mason Jar (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986), What My Father Believed (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1991), In the Bank of Beautiful Sins (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), Reign of Snakes (New York, Penguin Books, 1999), Lives of the Animals (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems (New York: Penguin Books, 2006) and Beautiful Country (New York: Penguin Books, 2010).
All the poems in the section entitled ‘New Poems’ appeared in Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems (2006), except for the following: ‘Babel’ first appeared in The Georgia Review; ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ and ‘Soundings’ first appeared in Poetry; ‘Stop and Listen’ first appeared in Memorious.