The Moon and Other Failures

The Moon and Other Failures presents two dozen new lyrics and a long dramatic narrative by F. D. Reeve, winner of the Golden Rose for lifelong poetic achievement. Reeve is a thinking-person's poet-meditative, weaving memories, mythic figures, personal reflections, and natural observances to arrive at larger truths. The short poems range from the elegiac "Village Graveyard" and philosophical "Coasting," a poem of almost perfect proportions, to such love poems as "Voices," and the witty "Telephone." Some of the poems express the sadness of irrecoverable loss; some the inevitability; and some rejoice in consequent rebirth and renewal. Repeatedly, throughout the book, the past is brought up against the present, this world against the next, the particular against the general.

F. D. Reeve has published approximately two dozen books of fiction, translations, and poetry. His honors include the New England Poetry Society's Golden Rose award and an award in literature from the American Academy National Institute of Arts and Letters. He earned a D. Lit. from New England College, and lives in Wilmington, Vermont. Reeve was once a Hudson River longshoreman and has spent years walking the earth, journeying out from his home state Vermont, over hills and through valleys from Mendocino to Murom, from Culebra to Komarovo. Reeve is the founding editor of Poetry Review. Currently he is a professor of letters emeritus at Wesleyan University.