I am grateful to the editors of the journals in which some parts of this book have previously appeared: American Poetry Review, Associated Writing Programs Chronicle, Orion, and World Literature Today. The chapter “Seeing Through Words: An Introduction to Bashō, Haiku, and the Suppleness of Image” first appeared as an Amazon Kindle Single e-book, The Heart of Haiku. Three chapters here, first delivered as the Bloodaxe Lectures at Newcastle University, appeared in much earlier form in Hiddenness, Uncertainty, Surprise: Three Generative Energies of Poetry.
Many of the thoughts in this book began with invitations over the past twenty years to talk about poetry with others. My thanks go to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference; the Napa Valley Writers Conference; the Key West Literary Seminars; Bennington College’s MFA Writing Seminars; the Crossing Borders symposium hosted by Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications and the Nanjing campus of the New York Institute of Technology; Fudan University (Shanghai); Dokkyo University (Tokyo); and the request to speak about Bashō for the Poetry in the Branches program of roving lectures in public libraries, cosponsored by Poets House and the Poetry Society of America.
My gratitude also to Deborah Garrison, Annie Eggers, and all those at Knopf, and beyond, who have contributed to the book you now hold in your hands.