The Moon Reflected Fire

"Doug Anderson is one of the bravest poets I know, utterly uncompromising. His language brims with compassion, rage, tenderness and pain. The Vietnam war is his primary subject, rendered here with a startling clarity of image and understanding, a wrenching intimacy born of experience. Anderson is cursed and blessed with memory, and his considerable poetic gift assures that we will not forget, either." -- Martin Espada

"Richard Burton said his father was famous as a miner because he could see the character of the coal. He would look at the face a bit, then hit it hard in the right spot, and tons of coal would fall down. I don't know if the story is true, but I know it's true of these poems about that war." -- Jack Gilbert

"These are trenchant, wrenching poems. With artistry and honesty they perform an inquest into war and its corrosive after effects." -- James Tate

"What is perhaps most striking about Doug Anderson's The Moon Reflected Fire is the poet's ability to have found forms to contain experiences most of us would not even be able to acknowledge let alone embrace. He has constructed these forms with what might be called a lyrical narration wherein the poems are driven not simply by a linear telling of events, but by a careful layering of consciousness as well." -- Bruce Weigl