To my family and friends, many thanks. A huge thank you to my editor, Kevin Connolly, who helped shape and tweak this book into its present form. To Alana Wilcox, Christina Palassio, Evan Munday and all the gang at Coach House for making this possible, thank you very much. Particular thanks also to Stephanie Bolster for the insight and careful readings that first turned this collection of poems into a manuscript; Heather Jessup for poems, friendship and exuberance; Judith Herz for the lessons on forsythia and poetry; Sarah Partridge for the biology facts and continuing conversations; Sara Hall for being the ‘common reader’ who is anything but common; and Lesley Hall for being my personal copy editor. Thanks also to Matthew Zapruder, Matthea Harvey and Christian Hawkey for their poems and support. To Luis Da Costa, who helps me experience words in a different way, thank you.
Thanks to the Canada Council, who gave me a grant to work on this manuscript from January to August 2007.
Thank you to the editors of the journals in which the following poems first appeared: The Antigonish Review: ‘The Certainty Dream,’ ‘Letter to My Father,’ ‘Schrödinger's Cat,’ ‘Insomnia’; ARC: ‘Pascal’s Wager’; The Bedazzler: ‘The Sun Library,’ ‘Survival Machine,’ ‘As Though Sealed in a Glass Jar’; Boston Review: ‘Dream in Which I am Separated from Myself,’ ‘I Invented the Birdcall,’ ‘Dream in Which the Dream is Scaled to Size,’ ‘Antelope Dream,’ ‘Little Essay on Genetics,’ ‘The Shipping Container,’ ‘Quick Tour of the Cathedral’; Colorado Review: ‘Watching a Leaf Fall I Cannot See’; Denver Quarterly: ‘One Point of Reference,’ ‘Vitrine’; jubilat: ‘Dream in Which I am Allowed Twelve Items’; Open City: ‘Remind Me What the Light is For’; LIT: ‘The Lost-and-Found Box’; PRISM International: ‘Variation on a Theme by Lyn Hejinian’; Swerve: ‘A Few Words About the Sea,’ ‘Mynah Speaks,’ ‘Love, Mynah,’ ‘Hearing Mynah I Hear Myself,’ ‘Mynah Flies Off,’ ‘Dream in Which I Apologize to the Birds,’ ‘Dress-up Dream,’ ‘The Birds Enjoy Their Morning Cup,’ ‘Mynah—Last Time,’ ‘Mynah Dreams Himself into a Statue’; Verse magazine website: ‘Overnight a Horse Appeared.’
‘Suspended in the Space of Reason: A Short Thesis’ first appeared in chapbook form, published by greenboathouse books under the title Suspended.
The line ‘manipulating the bodies they ride in’ (in ‘Little Essay on Genetics’) and the title ‘Survival Machine’ are borrowed from Richard Dawkins.
‘Watching a Leaf Fall I Cannot See’ is for Jennifer Cooper.
‘Letter to my Father’ is for John Hall with thanks for the jellyfish poem.