Intelligence of Clouds

Literature & Fiction

Stanley Moss

Poetry

Anvil Press Poetry

Stanley Moss dedicates these poems 'to departed friends: human, canine, arboreal, avian', setting the tone for a collection that is celebratory, occasional, salutatory. Striking out at 'Sunrise', the poems move through sections for 'Noon', 'Sunset', and 'Eclipse'. As light turns to shade, and shade to darkness, the viewpoint matures, grows deliberative, more aware of a pressing mortality. History, religion and cosmology proffer their solaces; death and grief are redeemed as tradition or rite, acts of god or fate. Ultimately it is the will to think, to remember, and to memorialise that offer solid foundations: 'It took time before I took my time', writes the poet. Moss creates a wonderfully peopled and cultivated world - one that is wild, giving, ephemeral.'Unthinkable questions, but when he formulates them they take on the quiet urgency of common daylight.' - John Ashbery'I've loved Stanley's poems since I first encountered a poem of his in Poetry magazine in John Berryman's office when I was nineteen.' - W. S. Merwin'God may or may not be his co-pilot, but Moss has a knack for lifting my spirits into 'the sweaty / life-loving, Book-loving air of happiness'.' - Parnassus'This is a book made of experience and high intellect...these poems curse and sing about the blessings and tragedies of personal life ...an important, gutsy collection.' - Yusef Komunyakaa

It's About Time

Lintott Press

Moss is oceanic: his poems rise, crest, crash, and rise again like waves. His voice echoes the boom of the Old Testament, the fluty trill of Greek mythology, and the gongs of Chinese rituals as he writes about love, nature, war, oppression, and the miracle of language. He addresses the God of the Jews, of the Christians, and of the Muslims with awe and familiarity, and chants to lesser gods of his own invention. In every surprising poem, every song to life, beautiful life, Moss, by turns giddy and sorrowful, expresses a sacred sensuality and an earthy holiness. Or putting it another way: here is a mind operating in open air, unimpeded by fashion or forced thematic focus, profoundly catholic in perspective, at once accessible and erudite, inevitably compelling. All of which is to recommend Mosss ability to participate in and control thoroughly these poems while resisting the impulse to center himself in them. This differentiates his beautiful work from much contemporary breast-beating. Moss is an artist who embraces the possibilities of exultation, appreciation, reconciliation, of extreme tenderness. As such he lays down a commitment to a common, worldly morality toward which all beings gravitate.

Almost Complete Poems

CARCANET PRESS PN REVIEW

God Breaketh Not All Mens Hearts Alike

Carcanet Press Ltd.

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Books by Stanley Moss