Poet: A.F. Moritz

John Ashbery’s esteem for A. F. Moritz has been seconded repeatedly by critics and readers. Starting in 1975 with Here and continuing through the years to Moritz’s latest, The Sentinel, this poet has carved an important career in poetry. This new collection has already begun garnering praise and awards: the title poem was honored by the prestigious Poetry magazine. These poems, exploring everything from vanishing civilizations to nature’s mysteries, display Moritz’s intelligence and insight blended with a supple craft and wordplay that have made his work unique in the field.

The follow up to The Sentinel, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, A.F. Moritz’s The New Measures is a bold collection of fiery, passionate, visionary, and fiercely singing new work. These poems make unique music, by turns tender and forceful, terrified and assured, grateful and enraged. They revel in pleasure, and the thirst for more pleasure. And they insist on the hope — perhaps paradoxical, perhaps impossible, yet never extinguished — for the perfection of a world both natural and human. The New Measures makes fear and grief into prophecy and joy at each turn of phrase. It is a brilliant new work from one of our greatest poets.