Filreis begins his program notes at Jacket2, by discussing the provenance of both the poem and its recording: "The poem was published in the poetry collection Alien Abduction in 2015. (This was his first book of poems since Inseparable of 2008, so we assume 'Polar Night' was written around then but not in time to be included in the 2008 book.)" He then frames the program through that collection, noting "Our discussion of the poem aligns well with a comment made by Dorothea Lasky about Alien Abduction as a whole: 'Warsh listens closely to everything, and in this book we find the mix of everything that makes up life... In it too we find a life that is always strange because it is living and constantly changing.'"
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