A.F. Moritz’s twenty-third book of poems originated with an impulse, beginning in April 2019, to write a series of continuous poems. The first goal was to keep them short. The second was to make them separate, in the process reflecting the whole of human life, stable in moments and bodies. In The Wren, Moritz arranges 70 short poems in a sort of galaxy: an apparent scatter, not of stars but of poems, of feeling-thoughts. What is the unity of these active “states” of ours, given th...

Shortlisted for the 2000 Governor General's Award for Poetry From the outskirts of the fevered empire, and the embers that were its heart, Moritz sings us to our selves -- our failures, our cruelties, our stupidities, and beauty which even now astonishes and leaves us breathless. Genuine political poetry is immensely difficult. Moritz succeeds, not because his list of atrocities is longer or more shocking, but because his vision is underwritten -- not whitewashed – by an ecstatic lyricism ...

Shortlisted for the 2000 Governor General's Award for Poetry From the outskirts of the fevered empire, and the embers that were its heart, Moritz sings us to our selves -- our failures, our cruelties, our stupidities, and beauty which even now astonishes and leaves us breathless. Genuine political poetry is immensely difficult. Moritz succeeds, not because his list of atrocities is longer or more shocking, but because his vision is underwritten -- not whitewashed – by an ecstatic lyricism ...

The Garden by A. F. Moritz is a passionate denunciation of injustice, especially as seen in the violent injustice directed to the African diaspora in North America. Comprised of a long poem, “The Garden in the Midst”, and an in-depth essay, “The Poet’s Garden,” the book centers on the South Central Los Angeles “riot” of 1992 in response to the acquittal of police officers caught badly beating Rodney King in 1991. From this central point, the poem and essay reach out to encompass t...

A. F. Moritz's poems integrate nature and enduring myth with our inner life so movingly, so convincingly, that they almost seem to be our own thoughts. His direct and intimate tone, and the power, calm, and clarity of his expression, are solid foundations for an exhilarating breadth and range of imagination.

A. F. Moritz's poems integrate nature and enduring myth with our inner life so movingly, so convincingly, that they almost seem to be our own thoughts. His direct and intimate tone, and the power, calm, and clarity of his expression, are solid foundations for an exhilarating breadth and range of imagination.

Few artists (one thinks of Rilke and Hopkins) have presumed to evoke the spirit of embodied Nature. A. F. Moritz not only succeeds in thus animating a living world, but he deals with our human presence and assault on it with sympathy and a larger vision than the misanthropy such injuries easily summon. This is nature poetry with a difference: through Moritz's landscapes, from the abandoned industries of the Rust Belt to the decaying monuments of vanished civilization, move the vivid and en...

Few artists (one thinks of Rilke and Hopkins) have presumed to evoke the spirit of embodied Nature. A. F. Moritz not only succeeds in thus animating a living world, but he deals with our human presence and assault on it with sympathy and a larger vision than the misanthropy such injuries easily summon. This is nature poetry with a difference: through Moritz's landscapes, from the abandoned industries of the Rust Belt to the decaying monuments of vanished civilization, move the vivid and en...

The Toronto Star called him a legendary figure in Canadian writing, and indeed George Fetherling has been prolific in many genres: poetry, history, travel narrative, memoir, and cultural studies. Plans Deranged by Time is a representative selection from many of the twelve poetry collections he has published since the late 1960s. Like his novels and other fiction, many of these poems are anchored in a sense of place—often a very urban one. Filled with aphorism and sharp ob...

The Garden by A. F. Moritz is a passionate denunciation of injustice, especially as seen in the violent injustice directed to the African diaspora in North America. Comprised of a long poem, “The Garden in the Midst”, and an in-depth essay, “The Poet’s Garden,” the book centers on the South Central Los Angeles “riot” of 1992 in response to the acquittal of police officers caught badly beating Rodney King in 1991. From this central point, the poem and essay reach out to encompass t...

A vibrant collection from one of America's most talented award-winning poets and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.Rarely has a book of poetry so borne the stamp of necessity as Christian Wiman's Every Riven Thing. Whether in stark, haiku-like descriptions of a cancer ward, surrealistic depictions of a social order coming apart, or fluent, defiant outpourings of praise, Wiman pushes his language and forms until they break open, revealing startl...

John Burnside's remarkable book is full of strange, unnerving poems that hang in the memory like a myth or a song.These are poems of thwarted love and disappointment, of raw desire, of the stalking beast, 'eye-teeth/and muzzle/coated with blood'; poems that recognise 'we have too much to gain from the gods, and this is why/they fail to love us'; poems that tell of an obsessive lover coming to grief in a sequence that echoes the old murder ballads, or of a hunter lo...