In poems that appear to hold details from my own life, many names and details have been changed, some real events combined, and some events invented. Putt-Putt Mini Golf, however, was a real miniature golf course and video arcade in Montgomery County, Maryland. The first three lines in part 2 of “Cloud Studies” adapt remarks by Jordan Ellenberg. Several people will recognize details from “Palinode with Study Guide, Spackling Knife, and Sewing Kit”; I am particularly grateful to Eric Meyer and to Sally Grant.
All the poems titled “After Callimachus” grow out of poems by the ancient Greek Alexandrian poet Callimachus. “So reactionaries …” grows out of the prologue to the Aetia (sometimes called “Against the Telchines”); “Half of me …” out of epigram 42; “It’s hard work …,” out of epigram 34.
For more on Scott Miller, Game Theory, and the Loud Family, the musical subjects of “Over Sacramento,” please see www.loudfamily.com. Many of their records are again available on streaming media and as CD reissues from Omnivore Records; you can read Miller’s own critical writings in his collection Music: What Happened?
In “Esprit Stephanie,” Esprit, or ESPRIT, was and is a line of clothing popular in the 1980s, known for its stencil-like logo, and still available today.
“Mean Girls” incorporates imitations of Charles Baudelaire’s (much shorter) “Femmes damnées.” “A Nickel on Top of a Penny” incorporates imitations of César Vallejo’s “Piedra negra sobre una piedra blanca.”
Details in “Indian Stream Republic” come from Daniel Doan’s study Indian Stream Republic: Settling a New England Frontier (Hanover: UPNE, 1997) and from the present-day town of Pittsburg, New Hampshire.
In “December 2016,” Disgrace is the novel by J. M. Coetzee.
In “Fuzzy Golem Doll with 6″ Keychain,” “Keep two truths in your pocket …” appears in the American Reform Jewish prayer book for High Holidays (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), where it is labeled only “Chasidic, 18th century”; Martin Buber, in Tales of the Hasidim, attributes it to Rabbi Simcha Bunim (or Bunem or Bunam). “The world was created for my sake”: Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5; “dust and ashes”: Genesis 18:27.
“Concord Grapes” draws on Sarah Oktay, “Native Divine Vine: Nantucket’s Fox Grape,” Yesterday’s Island 38:3 (May 2008), readable as of early 2017 at http://www.yesterdaysisland.com/2008/features/foxgrape.php.