Acknowledgments

Thank you to the editors of the following literary magazines for giving these poems (or versions of these poems) their first homes:

Arcturus: “At St. Joseph of Cluny Higher Secondary School, Puducherry, India” and “On the Way to Kuyilapalayam Higher Secondary School, Puducherry, India”; Bellingham Review: “Lyric Confesses” and “Necessary Premises”; Beloit Poetry Journal: “Advice to the Young Right Fielder”; Brevity: “Seascape with Eagle, Driftwood, Ravens, Seagull, Two Men, and Their Phones”; Dogwood: “Canzone Basking in the Pre-Apocalypse”; Fourteen Hills: “Another Incomprehensible Poem”; Los Angeles Review: “Incomprehensible Manifesto”; Passages North: “Chicago Gothic”; Prairie Schooner: “Picking Cranberries” and “Picking Crowberries” (as “Picking”); Redivider: “Pluck the Strings without Delay”; Watershed Review: “A Reply to the Obtrusive Narrator”; and Zyzzyva: “A Matter of Fact.”

“Winter, Moving Still” and “Winter Landscape with Flirting Tourists” were published as part of the artist-in-residence program at Denali National Park.

I acknowledge these words were composed on and about the unceded ancestral lands of the Ahtna, Dena’ina, Tanana, and Koyukon Dené peoples, and the Sugpiaq people, who stewarded these lands for thousands of years and continue to steward these lands today. I am grateful to live and work here.

Thank you to the National Park Service and Denali National Park for my time in residency in Denali. My reflections on nature writing, John Haines, and the relationship between the self and nature began while I stayed at the Savage River cabin. Thank you to Kim Arthur, David Bechkal, Denny Capps, Tara Lewandowski, Cass Ray, Susan Wright, and all of the Denali staff for sharing your knowledge and time with me.

Thank you to the Rasmuson Foundation for the support of an Artist Fellowship and to the Alaska Arts and Culture Foundation for the support of a Connie Boochever Fellowship for Emerging Artists and an Alaska Literary Award. Their generous gifts provided me with the time to write these poems.

I am also grateful to the US State Department, the United States–India Educational Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation for the support of a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching, which allowed me to travel in India and visit schools there. Rev. Fr. P. Paul Rajkumar, Philomena De Condappa, and the students of Pope John Paul II College of Education, I hold you in my heart always.