Primitive Mood

This collection of poems examines the damaged lives of society s lost and marginalized using myth and fairy tale as an ironic lens. Eschewing sentiment or facile prescription, poet David Moolten s dispassionate but respectful renderings of his characters sufferings debunk wishful indifference and reveal profiles in strength. From the plight of the urban junkie to genocide both contemporary and historical, the poems allow the truth to tell itself, in language that is both potent and efficient. The verse is exacting in its precision, but ultimately casts the light of hope on the immediate darkness.

Each of David Moolten s poems creates a finely observed human story, a story told with deep empathy and compassion, and often with a palpable sense of gratitude. Whether he writes of his Jewish grandfather s response to Wagner s music, or The Girl Without Hands, or a Native American activist who drank herself out / of a smashed marriage, Moolten transforms our world by evoking theirs. He approaches human suffering and injustice with steadiness and tenderness, a clinical eye and a passionate heart. I came away from reading Primitive Mood with the feeling expressed at the end of the poem Klezmer : Even now I m greedy to hear more. --Jack Coulehan, MD, author of Medicine Stone, co-editor of Primary Care