OF RARE EARTHS

Many of these poems were published by Pete Spence in the Australianmagazines No Placebos and Oz Burp. His encouragement was instrumental inmy writing the "Twig or Twine" series. Deepest thanks to Pete. Poems from"Clomp Clomp" were published in Balmorology and in the Loch Raven Review.Many thanks to Tom Diventi, Dick Turner, and Dan Cuddy.Thanks to Bill Engstrand who wrote music to accompany some of these poemson upright bass and performed them with me at Normals and Current Space,Doug Retzler's Nature in the Park poetry reading, and in my back yard withchickens accompanying the bass and the poems. Thanks to Justin Sirois,whose poem inspired me to write poems with curving lines using Illustrator,back in 2009. Thanks to Tina Darragh, whose poems inspired the form of thetitles in "Twig or Twine". Thanks to the following people who have encouragedand/or inspired these poems: Michael Ball, LB Bender, Don Berger, CharlesBrohawn, Dan Carney, Ellen Carter, Christophe Casamassima, Liz Downing,Joules Fallier, Jocelyn Garlington, Keith Gunderson, Mark Jickling, Doug Lang,M. Magnus, Roger Parish, Jamie Perez, Marshall Reese, Phyllis Rosenzweig,Kusano Shimpei, Param Anand Singh, Terence Winch, Rupert Wondolowski,my siblings, John, Karen, Martha, and Tom, my wife Ann, and our children,Elizabeth and Will. Thanks to David Beaudouin for wonderful editorial andpoetics support and to Hank Stanton for publishing this book. Thanks to mywife Ann for the front cover photograph and the back cover portrait and foreverything.