Incarnadine
Page 5
“How (Not) to Speak of God” (originally titled “All Times & All Tenses Alive in This Moment”) can be viewed on the ceiling of the portico of the Pennsylvania College of Arts & Design, where it was painted as a mural by the artist team Root 222 as part of Poetry Paths, a public visual and literary art project in the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
“The Troubadours Etc.” also appeared in The Best American Poetry 2008, edited by Charles Wright and David Lehman.
“The Troubadours Etc.,” “The Lushness of It,” and “Annunciation as Fender’s Blue Butterfly with Kincaid’s Lupine” also appeared in The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Second Edition.
“On a Spring Day in Baltimore, the Art Teacher Asks the Class to Draw Flowers” also appeared in Pushcart Prize Anthology XXVII.
“Annunciation: Eve to Ave,” “Annunciation (from the grass beneath them),” and “Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle” also appeared on Poetry Daily.
Thank you to Willian Olsen for selecting “Night Shifts at the Group Home” as the winner of the Fifth Wednesday Journal Editor’s Prize in Poetry for 2012.
I am grateful to Lewis & Clark College, the MacDowell Colony, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Witter Bynner Foundation (and to Kay Ryan for selecting me for a fellowship), and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center for generous fellowships and support that enabled me to complete this collection.
Thank you Gabriela Rife, archangel and muse to this collection. The heroine of “Entrances and Exits” and “On Wanting to Tell [ ] about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes” is Olivia Glosser Asher. Thank you, Olivia. Thank you, Michele Glazer, for going a long way into these poems with me and helping me through them. I am grateful to many readers for their attention, care, and invaluable help, especially Endi Bogue Hartigan, Molly Lou Freeman, Mark Szybist, D. A. Powell, John Casteen, Joy Katz, Rachel Cole, Katie Ford, Sara Guest, and Jeffrey Shotts. Thank you to my husband, Jerry Harp, for always helping me see the potential in my attempts, and for believing in them. To my colleagues, friends, and family, my deepest gratitude for your generosity, support, and friendship.
MARY SZYBIST is the author of a previous collection of poems, Granted, which was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writing Award, and a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, she lives in Portland, Oregon, and teaches at Lewis & Clark College and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
The text of Incarnadine is set in Minion Pro, an original typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in 1990. Composition by BookMobile Design and Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Printed by BookMobile on acid-free paper.