Author’s Note I’ve always loved the old sonnet sequences more than any of the sonnets in them, magnificent or lovely as these may be. The sequences take up as no single poem can the unpredictable mix of experiences and themes with the prevailing passion, all going on during a longish stretch of time. Then there are the scraps of narrative that come out incidentally, the shifts (alas) in the passion itself, the sense that each poem is being done at a sitting with the time passing, that an idea that doesn’t come through satisfactorily here may turn up later (only now with a fresh secondary theme jostling it which later becomes itself a main theme), the untidy couplings of metaphysics and peevishness, jealousy or other unworthy emotions, this or that unrelated preoccupation obtruding along the way, the speaker himself changing willy-nilly, the bits of news, glooms, dull stretches, elations — and the old types, the anniversary sonnet, the insomniac sonnet, the sonnet about the sonnet. When I found myself taking up running at the height of the craze, a byproduct was that phrases kept coming to mind, pieces of poems, having to do not only with running but also with the not especially beautiful or otherwise remarkable beach where I ran. I had come to love the place for its shapes, tones, smells and the rest, not least the people that showed up there. All this, with its daily, hourly changeableness, I was each day looking forward obsessively to visiting. So here was a passion, and it occurred to me that I could cross the new craze with an old craze and do a sonnet sequence, drawing on whatever came in handy in the older craze, for treatment of what I was doing down at Hendry’s nearly every day, over the weeks, the months, the unspectacular seasons. A.S. xi