Particulars of Place

Moore, a longtime filmmaker who published his first poetry collection, Writing the Silences, at age 90, puts his cinematic eye in service of his poetry in this second offering. A contemporary of the 1940s San Francisco Renaissance poets, his poems retain a modernist feel: “There must be something left standing at twilight something to point to : color : mother of pearl : black plastic streets from a bone cold all day rain.” Moore’s lines are sharp, vivid, and erudite, but his heavy reliance on metaphor and difficult allusions may alienate less adventurous readers. Those who take the time to explore will find that he does not shy away from deep questioning, as he presses readers to “look where your questions have brought you.” Punctuation play, particularly in the “Delete” poems, lends a flowing sense of order to Moore’s litany of unraveled thoughts. The book become less cerebral and more heartrending in the long poem “Grief Octaves,” where he adopts the royal we and asks, “Is the sunset greater because we watch it together?” These are the late poems of a still-sprightly mind, and Moore knows that “There is that which, having traveled far, returns/ although not native to this place—wild honeysuckle,/ sweet vernal grass—and there is that which, although/ far traveled, does not return.” [em](Apr.) [/em]