Acknowledgments
1
Rider Unhorsed
On Leaving Home
Guide
The Largest of the Circus Animals
Oakland Work Crew
Worry Bone
Notes on Thirty Years in the Life of a Ventriloquist
The End of Reading
Learning to Wait
Inspiration
American Beech
Ventriloquist on an Off-Day
2
Panic Grass and Feverfew
Phaëton
Ventriloquist on the Moor
Still Life, Young Woman at the Water’s Edge
Park City Grille
A Brief History of the Decline
The Origin of Pigeons
One of the Dummies at Night
3
Explanation Beginning with a River
Maker
Wildflowers of North America
Self-Portrait as a Word Ending in E
Notes on Colic
How to Make Fatherhood Lyrical
Music in My Head
Death of a Ventriloquist
4
Proof #4
Visiting Chicago
Four Planes of Experience
Rattling Funicular
Caravaggio’s Peter
The Prayer of Glass
Disabused Sonnet
The Perhaps World
Pull
The Worst First Line
More Matter, Less Art
The Nots
Notes