Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. CONTENTS ix
3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi
4. I. THE ENEMY
5. Dialogue with Sun and Poet 3
6. Addressed to Her (Provincetown, June 2002) 4
7. ‘‘Elsa, Varadero, 1934’’ 5
8. Night Has Fallen 6
9. Personal Mythology 7
10. Piranhas 8
11. Brief Treatise on the New Millennial Poetics 10
12. El Viejo y la Mar 12
13. Ode to the Man Incidentally Caught in the Photograph of Us on My Desk 13
14. The Enemy 14
15. God, Gays, and Guns 15
16. Patriotic Poem 17
17. Post–9/11 Parable 18
18. Sestina Dolorosa 19
19. What Passes Now for Moral Discourse 21
20. from Libro de Preguntas 22
21. II. EIGHTEEN DAYS IN FRANCE
22. Eighteen Days in France 27
23. III. TOWARD A THEORY OF MEMORY
24. from Cien Sonetos de Amor 47
25. A Simple Cuban Meal 51
26. The Sailfish 52
27. Ganymede, to Zeus 53
28. After the Long Drive 55
29. For Jorge, after Twenty Years 57
30. Song in the Off-Season 60
31. Catastrophic Sestina 61
32. Toward a Theory of Memory 63
33. Patagonia 67
34. Defense of Marriage 68
35. The Story of Us 69
36. The Sodomite’s Lament 71
37. Equinoctial Downpour 72
38. Pantoum for Our Imagined Break-Up 73
39. The Changing of the Seasons 74
40. Once, It Seemed Better 75
41. October, Last Sail 76
42. IV. DAWN, NEW AGE
43. Dawn, New Age 79
44. Allegorical 80
45. Progress 81
46. The Crocuses 82
47. Crybaby Haiku 83
48. ‘‘SILENCE = DEATH’’ 87
49. Clinical Vignettes 88
50. You Bring Out the Doctor in Me 90
51. Composite of Three Poems from the Same Anthology by Williams, Rukeyser, and Sexton 92
52. Tuesday Morning 93
53. Arriving 95
54. Absolution 97
55. On Doctoring 98
56. Sick Day 99