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In addition to my wife, Peg, for her unflagging support, and K. K.Merker,wholaunchedtheidea,thanksareduetoCornell Collegeforhalfadozensummersoffacultydevelopmentgrants, which supplied not only moral support but transcription, typing , typewriter ribbons, word-processing discs, gasoline, and plane tickets for interviewing trips; to my teaching colleagues atCornell,whohaveallowedmetodomywork;toCarolBrokel forthisandalltheothermanuscriptsshehastypedandretyped over the course of twenty years;to Eric Houts and the Breakfast Club of Medicine Bow,Wyoming, for their tolerance and good humor on a 7,000-mile, month-long interviewing trip in the summer of 1981; to my son-in-law, Kevin Kriegel, for the sound enhancement of the very difficult David Godine tapes; to the American Poetry Review and its editors, Stephen Berg and David Bonanno, for first publishing the interview with James Laughlin; to Michael Heffernan at Midwest Quarterly for first publishing the interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Acknowledgments andfinally,ofcourse,toJames Laughlin,HarryDuncan,LawrenceFerlinghetti ,JohnMartin,DanielHalpern,SamHamill and Tree Swenson, Jonathan Williams, and David Godine for their time, their candor, and their enduring contributions to the world of American letters. Acknowledgments x ...

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