Max and I were first introduced to each other in 2015 and immediately bonded through a series of ensuing e-mail and text correspondences—usually about poetry, but also about painting, glass blowing, and balloon races, among other things. In addition to this more casual exchange, I read and gave Max editorial feedback on early versions of Four Reincarnations. Indeed, I loved the poems I found within its pages so much that I ended up publishing several of them in The Iowa Review, where I serve as the poetry editor, and in Horsethief Magazine, a publication I co-founded with Justin Boening.
