A History of Color: New and Selected Poems - Softcover

Moss, Stanley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1583224858 ISBN 13: 9781583224854

Publisher: Seven Stories Press, 2003

Synopsis

Few poets today, even very good ones, write lines, as Stanley Moss does, that are so exquisitely crafted you cannot help but remember them. "What is heaven but the history of color," begins the new long poem after which this book is named. "We know at ninety sometimes it aches to sing," begins another poem, for a woman upon her ninetieth birthday. In the hands of this master, "Ah who art in heaven," transmigrates to the quieting "ah, ah, baby." And here is Moss in an early poem: "I’ve always had a preference / for politics you could sing / on the stage of the Scala," ending that poem with words attributed to Lincoln: "I don’t know what the soul is, / but whatever it is, I know it can humble itself."
A History of Color: New and Collected Poems by Stanley Moss is the first one-volume, complete edition of the poetry of this important living American poet. A History of Color proposes poetry that is made to be useful. Moss is our leading psalmist. Metaphors for wonder abound, his language one of sorrow and exaltation.

About this title

About the Author

Born in New York City, STANLEY MOSS was educated at Trinity College and Yale University. He has been writing poetry for over a half-century. In addition, Moss is a private art dealer specializing in Italian and Spanish old masters, as well as the publisher and editor of The Sheep Meadow Press, a non-profit publishing house devoted to poetry. Moss lives in Clintondale and River Corners, New York.

Reviews

Steeped in myths and holy texts, Moss is an unfettered metaphysical poet who sees in a blood-gorged louse the great chain of being that links without prejudice or preference bugs, rats, cats, hyenas, Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Inspired by painting as much as by nature, Moss creates images rich in historical resonance and startlingly fresh in their inventive provocativeness. In the long title poem that introduces the more than 40 new works that spearhead this brimming retrospective collection, Moss achieves an astonishing sense of pageantry as he considers the fanaticism for color that induced our ancestors to crush plants, shellfish, and beetles to make brilliant pigments and dyes, and painters from Giotto to Rothko to devote their lives to color's magic. Beauty is always a matter of sacrifice, Moss reminds us, just as eroticism is inextricably entwined with death. Attesting to a spirituality beyond the strictures of religion, Moss declares, in endlessly intriguing poems that reach beyond the confines of the page, that "all days are equally holy" and that children's laughter is "more sacred than prayer." Donna Seaman
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Edition details

• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1583224858
• ISBN 13: 9781583224854
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248