If you've missed Richard Moore, we hope this brief sampling (and more to follow later this month) will entice you to look for his work, or go to Amazon Bookstore online and purchase a copy. A talented performer, Moore is a far better poet, from the rich dramatic writing of Empires (1976) to the serio-comic writing of The Mouse Whole (1961;1997), Bottom is Back(1993) and No More Bottom(1991). Moore's critical essays, collected in The Rule That Liberates (1995), are also worth hunting down, as he has clear, well-researched writing on matters of great interest and significance to both poets and readers of poetry. As is true of the best of Expansive poets, he is both a narrative poet and a writer with considerable lyric gifts, which he expresses in solidly constructed meters, rhyming forms, and blank verse of a quality familiar in American writers perhaps only in Robert Frost (David Mason is another of these). Enjoy these poems.

from PYGMIES AND PYRAMIDS, by Richard Moore, forthcoming from Orchises
Press in 1998:Copyright (c) 1997 by Richard Moore
Reprinted by permission of Richard Moore
Not to be copied for commercial or other disbribution or use

                         Pygmies                                I

Praised be The Lord who, along with my bad teeth, blessed me with patience,
  and, when the patience was gone, 
                                   knotted my heart with despair:
fear of it stirs me to dream up these eerie magnificent verses,
  that, without readers, will cause 
                                    deeper despair than they cure,
which will, in turn, urge out more verses, until I'm a tombstone.
  Such is the fever that still 
                               burns for the poison and drinks.
Is it not thus that my perverse lusts and desires would have it?
  Is it not suitable thus?  
                            Sadness that darkens my heart,
think of the vacant and trivial eyes of the spirits in Heaven,
  joyously singing to God 
                          Johann Sebastian Bach
all week long--and on days off, Mozart, purely for pleasure.
  Angels have need of our song.  
                                 What could they think up themselves,
steeped in desireless bliss and the unpained loves of the Blessed?
  Bone-deep suffering here 
                           deepens our frivolous hearts
when they survive it; and then, when they don't one day, it is over,
  Heavenly music and God, 
                          all our absurdities, gone
out of our cold heads, as from its tomb the cadaver of Pharaoh:
  sealed in its coffin of gold, 
                                royal decay that attracts
masterful robbers, as shimmering Heavenly images, poets:
  emptiness draws men in, 
                          vacuums them up with the dust.

                        R.M.

from NO MORE BOTTOM by Richard Moore, Orchises Press, P. O. Box 20602,
Alexandria, VA 22320-1602, $11.00 postpaid, 1991:
Copyright (c) 1991 by Richard Moore
Reprinted by Special Permission of Richard Moore
Not to be copied for commercial or other disbribution or use

                            Affluence
        
             Your ample house has amplified your plight.
             The wife who sang once, charmed you, seemed so right
             is now a toilet flushing in the night.

                                 R.M.







                       Love Song 

               A metaphor useful and practical  
               is that life is a sentence--syntactical--   
                   where love in the flesh is  
                   the pause that refreshes.  

               In my sentence, dear, things by the myriad 
               might qualify as the period,  
                   but O, sweet momma, 
                   you're the comma.  

                        R.M.

from BOTTOM IS BACK by Richard Moore, Orchises Press, P. O. Box 20602, Alexandria, VA 22320-1602, $13.00 postpaid, 1994:
Copyright (c) 1993 by Richard Moore
Reprinted by Special Permission of Richard Moore
Not to be copied for commercial or other disbribution or use

                  In Praise of Old Wives

                 Let her become my mate   
                 and get me in her power     
                 and save me from the fate 
                 of Arthur Schopenhauer.

                 Cursing the common people, he   
                 led a secluded life   
                 and, hating women deeply,   
                 grew old--and had no wife.    

                 A young sculptress appeared, 
                 disarmed, charmed, got his trust. 
                 It happened as he had feared. 
                 She carved his famous bust.     

                 The portrait, thought by many   
                 to show her adoration,
                 sold for a pretty penny  
                 and made her reputation.  

                 Together they rejoiced.      
                 Her compliments were deft.   
                 His glad old eyes were moist.   
                 A month later, she left.       

                 There was a power above her--    
                 duty to art, she said.     
                 There also was a lover,  
                 and he was good in bed. 

                 Poor Arthur pined away,    
                 was buried in the spring.  
                 People incline to say,   
                 women were not his thing.    

                 But is that all to say?    
                 A good old jealous wife 
                 keeps sculptresses at bay, 
                 philosophers in life. 

                        R.M.

Look for additions from Moore later this month, when part of the first book of The Mouse Whole will be reprinted here. Also, look for Richard Moore's books, including those shown below:

No More Bottom (Orchises, 1996)

The Mouse Whole (Negative Capability Press, 1995)