This book, like the youngest child in a large family,
is surrounded by a plethora of doting aunts and uncles.
Thanks to their good natures and their talent, 
its virtues are enhanced, its faults diminished.
Let me go through the family album.

First comes Nancy Kelly, bellwether and personal support,
to whom I read the earliest drafts with trepidation.
If she said, "Where did that come from?"
I knew the draft was worth reworking.
If she said, "I don't get it," I knew it wasn't.
She has saved everyone a lot of time.

Another time saver is my lifelong friend and mentor,
Morris Halle, who,
mindful of the relationship between brevity and wit,
suggested that I keep each myth to 200 words or less.

Next come Naomi Feigelson Chase, Helene Davis, Jean Flanagan,
Mariéve Rugo, and Lee Varon,
members of the poetry workshop
under whose generous eyes
the shapes of the myths were fashioned and refashioned.

There there is Yasuyo Iguchi,
who designed my first book of poems
and the jacket for these myths,
and who has somehow suffused this paper and ink
with her own gentle nature,
if not with her rare generosity.
That the reader will have to take on faith.

It was Gaby Whitehouse  who suggested
that I read to her and her spouse, George,
at their Cape Cod home
on an unbelievably could New Year's Day two years ago.
When George asked to read the myths
at the Arlington Street Church on successive Sundays,
I said if he did, I would attend.
He did, and so did I.

Then there is Kim Crawford Harvie,
minister of the Arlington Street Church,
who allowed the myths to share her pulpit
and whose sermons and homilies were more compelling
than anything I heard on those Sundays
except for the candles of sorrow and joy
lit by members of her congregation.
There war reception I will not forget.

Finally, there is Larry Cohen,
friend and colleague of twenty years,
who, in an incautious moment,
offered to put this entire enterprise together
and did so more spectacularly than I could ever have wished.
I thank him.

I thank all the family.

December 22, 1996
Cambridge, Massachusetts 

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