Many tensions are at work in the playfully unconstrained poems of Stanley Moss: ordinary and mythical lives, the political and the personal, high art and low comedy intermingle, achieving an effect that is often surreal and always striking. Here God and Death are not matters for detached speculation but constant and vivid presences, whether centre-stage or waiting in the wings. An engagement with history is brought to bear on legend and on current affairs: a poem addressing 9/11 summons up the figure of Walt Whitman, whose exuberance and resolute faith in humanity Moss echoes...
Many tensions are at work in the playfully unconstrained poems of Stanley Moss: ordinary and mythical lives, the political and the personal, high art ...
"Stanley Moss is American poetry's best-kept secret, better known as the innovative publisher of other poets than for his own highly charged, stingingly beautiful lyrics. That should change with the publication of his long-awaited and gorgeous new poems. "--John Ashbery "Again and again, coming upon a poem of Stanley Moss', I have had the feeling of being taken by surprise. Not simply by the eloquence or the direct authenticity of the language, for I had come to expect those in his poems. The surprise arose from the nature of his poetry itself, and from the mystery that his poems confront and...
"Stanley Moss is American poetry's best-kept secret, better known as the innovative publisher of other poets than for his own highly charged, stinging...
