Imagine a poet who can deal with the experience of Jack Kerouac but with too much intelligence to limit himself to the road. You dont have to imagine him. He exists in Moore Moran. Moran has many skills, all of them beautifully bright, and on occasion when he looks into the abyss they take him safely over it.
I tend to like Moran best when he is at his most formal, most concise, most spiritual. But I like everything in this book, his first in a decade, and I am very grateful to Swallow, whose specialty is poets of the American West, for giving us this generous sampling from one of Ivor Winters greatest Stanford students. * Able Muse *
Moore Moran writes out of a wide range of experience in both traditional and experimental verse. Reading his work is a joy for the reader seeking a mature and sensitive mind.
What impresses me most about Moore Moran is that he is, at the same time, a true contemporary of the best formal poets who have written in English in our day and the possessor of a unique voice that cannot be mistaken for that of any other poet.
Moore Moran knows how poems should be made, and a great many of his poems score resounding victories.
