The Garbage Eater: Poems

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge the support of editors and staff at the following publications, where some of these poems first appeared: Ascent: “At the City Church of San Francisco” Black Warrior Review: “The Foreman at Rest” Books & Culture: “The Little Flowers of Dan Quisenberry” The Christian Century: “Via Negativa,” “Longing, Lenten” Hudson Review: “No Sol in California” Image: “The First Request of Lazarus,” “Petition: California Avenue,” “Devotion: For Our Bodies,” “Intercession: For My Daughter” Literary Imagination: “Papyric Fragments” Measure: “Geography Lesson, 1983” New Madrid: “Ten Definitions Approximating Grief,” “Bridal Cave” PN Review (UK): “Tea with Mr. Milton” Poetry East: “Afternoon Pilgrims” Poetry International: “The Snow Day” Radix: “The Advent Calendar” Raritan: “Lyke as a ship, that through the Ocean wyde,” “Meditation in an Olive Garden” Rock & Sling: “Contrition: Midnight Message” Saint Ann’s Review: “Field Trip: Two Colonies” Sewanee Theological Review: “Rondeau for Plotinus” Southwest Review: “An Appeal to the Ghost of Patrick Kavanagh” Water-Stone Review: “Sponge Bath as Answer to the Problem of Knowledge” Wunderkammer: “Final Night, in Allston” “Lyke as a ship, that through the Ocean wyde” and “Parousia” were featured in Yale Poets, a chapbook produced by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (2003). x “The First Request of Lazarus” also appears in the anthologies American Religious Poems (Library of America, 2006) and Best New Poets 2007 (Meridian/University of Virginia Press). “Ten Definitions Approximating Grief” and “Risk” were selected for The Poetry Center of Chicago 14th Annual Juried Reading chapbook (2008). A Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University allowed me to complete some of these poems and begin others. Franke, Harvey, and Whiting fellowships at Yale University were additionally helpful. The G. W. Aldeen Memorial Fund at Wheaton College and an award from the Illinois Arts Council have recently provided support during the final writing and arrangement of this volume. My tremendous thanks to certain instrumental or ministerial readers: Jeff Galbraith, John Hollander, Jesse Zuba, Isaac Cates, Wes Davis, Rachel Wetszteon (whose memory I honor here), Kimberly Johnson, Jill Peláez Baumgaertner, Teri Jacobs—and especially—Rick Barot, Quan Barry, and David Wright. TheGarbageEater ...