Beatty - The Switching/Yard

The author wishes to acknowledge the following journals in which some of these poems first appeared, sometimes in earlier versions: BigCityLit (The Dealer in the Natural World, The Switching/Yard); Catch Up (Stein: Letter to a Young Rilke, Switching); Chautauqua Literary Journal (Revenant); Columbia Poetry Review (Driving While Wet, My Sister as Moving Object); Connotation Press: An Online Artifact (Sticking It to the Man, The Body Snatchers); Court Green (Dear American Poetry, Delicious, Ghostdaddys, My Mother Was a Dress, Three Faces and All These Fallen Gods, Visitation at Gogama); Cream City Review (adventures of birthmother [mary tyler moore], Top-10 List); 5AM (Drinking the Lizard King, The Hit Man); Fourth River (White Girl in a Record Store); Girls with Glasses (jimi dream); Gulf Stream Magazine (Outside the Carnegie Library, Oakland, Why I Don't Fuck Intellectuals); Kestrel (Monument to the War Dead); Parthenon West (California Corridor); Platte Valley Review (Approaching Denver/Union Station, dear fresno, Notes on a Nevada Flood, On Leaving the 5th Funeral in 15 Weeks); PMS (adventures of birthmother [texas chainsaw massacre]); Poet Lore (Her Steerage); Provincetown Arts Magazine (In Waking: Summer); Redivider (Youngest Known Savior); Sierra Nevada Review (Blind); South Dakota Review (Lovely); Third Coast (Shrink); Triquarterly (Reading Wanda Coleman on the California Zephyr); Willow Springs (American Revolver). Ghostdaddys first appeared in Future Earth in a much earlier version. Company Car first appeared in Natural Language: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Sunday Poetry and Reading Series Anthology. Many of these poems also appeared in Ravage, a chapbook published by Lefty Blondie Press, edited by Amy Lee Heinlen and Marguerite Sargent. I would like to express my appreciation to the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Howard Heinz Endowment and Laurel Foundation; the Creative Capital Foundation; the MacDowell Colony; Allison Adelle Hedge Coke and the Platte River Whooping Crane Trust; the Santa Fe Arts Institute; and Leighton Studios, Banff, Alberta, Canada, for fellowships and support that helped me to write these poems. Special thanks to the terrific staff at the University of Pittsburgh Press, especially LowellBritson, Maria Sticco, and David Baumann, for expertise, support, and good humor.

Heartfelt thanks to the following people who have helped me with these poems: Ed Ochester for X-ray poem vision, the best editing, and believing in me; Judith Vollmer, poetry comrade, for otherworldly insight, wolf energy that shaped this book, and in-town Italian writing residencies; Aaron Smith for NYC/West VA workshops, for killer poems, sound and line, for staying dirty; Stacey Waite for hoagies and Wednesday poem talk; RJ Gibson for his romantic poems; Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, cosmic sister, for her world-changing ways; James Allen Hall for his brutally tender poems; Peter Oresick for courage and seeing beyond the lines; Joan Bauer for Laguna/Pittsburgh workshops and wonderful poems; Michelle Laflamme for kindness and poetry in Santa Fe; Cynthia Hogue for wild dinner talk and French translation; Perish for his rap, for help with Grandmaster Flash; Greg Edmondson for teaching me the ins-and-outs of jockstraps; Kayla Sargeson for her unstoppable conquistador ways; Tess, Sagittarius sister and kick-ass poet, and Thom for their over-the-top generosity and love; Rhoda Mills Sommer for cool glasses and saying it honestly; Dr. G. for the way he sees it; Celeste Gainey for lighting the world with her poems and LA cool; Elise for pumping iron and the shoes; Nancy Kirkwood, bloodsister, for being wildly forthcoming. Thanks to Sonia Cotton and Marika Lhoumeau for French lessons and six o'clock pizza in Banff; Jeffrey McDaniel for wildass stories; Amata Boccella for sheepwalking and conjuring; Ellen Wadey for Chicago tours and Jo Mama talks; Pat Bernarding for staying; Camille Norton for adventures in Stockton on election night; Lisa Alexander for keeping the weird true. Thanks to Elsie, the ship/studio at Banff; Michael Thomas for Gramercy Park workshops; Natalie Diaz for being a sweet Virgo and the river trip; Monique for surprise food and kindness; Susan for the Tucson retreat; to Sweet Pie for the naked song; Suzanne Roberts for the ride to Tahoe; Liane Ellison Norman for treasured friendship and mad adventures; Kay Comini for wild bravery; Lucienne Wald for end rhyme; Gerry Boccella for deep poems and seeing beneath it all; Anahita Firouz for the eye/and brilliant work; Tom and Barb for hanging in; Bounce, honorary Don-brother; Michael Wurster, poetry hero still; Jimmy Cvetic, golden glove poet, for gargantuan ideas and chicken fornicating; Nancy Foley for all kinds of rotation; All the Madwomenfor your unending curiosities and madness; the Carlow gangespecially Lou, Sigrid, Ellie, Anne, Katie, Roberta, Irene, Sue, Sarah, Michelle; Sarah Williams-Devereux for spontaneous poem-songs and making a way; Deborah for laughing stories; Michelle Stoner and Lisa Alexander forrelentless sound engineering; thanks to Amy Lee Heinlen and Marguerite Sargent for great spirit and dirt; Tam-o for her wild Taurus ways; Vee for courage, big fun, and telling it straight; Jay Flory, traveler, for speaking the heart of it; Colleen K. L. L.

Liebler for wild Detroit; Britt Horner for years of books and garden talk; Jim Daniels for down-and-dirty work poems; Granite Amit for her fierce art; Denise Duhamel for poems and hair on fire; Maureen McLane for pretzels and bravery at MacDowell; Maggie Anderson, amazing teacher and friend, for leisurely poetry walks; Anne Marie Macari for going deep; Alicia Ostriker for saying it true; Diane Glancy for open space and writing it all out; Jerry Stern for mad dancing and big heart; Afaa Michael Weaver for deep cool and for loving his truck; Ed Hirsch for sweetness; Brenda Hillman for the car ride. In memory of Bob Patak, rock man, visionary, who helped us all; Dorothy Holley, who showed us how it was done; Anita Gevaudan Byerly for late night dancing and Steam Rising; Buddy Nordan, one of a kind; Wendy Davies, poet/cat lover; Christina Murdock, who left us too soon with her beautiful poems; Tess Raynovich, poet of the world and forever lovely spirit; Big Jim Hollowood and the 40 ft. guitar; R. T. Beatty and Charlotte Thoma, who are with me always; the spirit of Patricia Dobler that continues strong.