Keynote
Lyrical and frank meditations on mortality from a four-time Minnesota Book Award winner
Book Title
Enter
Subtitle
Poems
Cover Image
- “Enter, Jim Moore’s wise new collection, demonstrates that, at 79, this poet is still at the top of his game. . . . It’s astonishing how adroitly he moves between seemingly disparate topics in the space of a single poem. . . . There’s so much grace and tenderness in his work, and not a shred of self-importance.”—Amanda Holmes Duffy, Washington Independent Review of Books
Poem Excerpt
Sometimes the world won’t let itself
be sung. Can’t become a poem. Sometimes
we are sane, but sanity alone is not enough.
Warm moonlight and wind. I am sitting here,
simply breathing because there is no other way
to be with those who no longer can.
I don’t know what to say about it all,
but if you do, please show me how to be you.
—from “How to Come out of Lockdown”
be sung. Can’t become a poem. Sometimes
we are sane, but sanity alone is not enough.
Warm moonlight and wind. I am sitting here,
simply breathing because there is no other way
to be with those who no longer can.
I don’t know what to say about it all,
but if you do, please show me how to be you.
—from “How to Come out of Lockdown”
Body
In Enter, poet Jim Moore navigates the public spaces of his neighborhood—parks, boardwalks, piazzas, even parking garages—and encounters people negotiating mortality in the pandemic age just as he is coming to terms with his own long story. In his signature lucid and wry voice, Moore acknowledges suffering while making room for joy and for moments of peace. These poems offer shelter to readers and, in summoning poets like Rilke and Tsvetaeva, remind us that poetry’s tenderness can be repaid in tenderness. “Please show me how to be you,” he writes in deeply intimate lines revealing a poettapped into the networks of human connection vibrating under the surface of all the places humans gather.
Enter is a collection of thoughtful meditations on hope at a moment when hope seems far-fetched, when humanity is faced with the inevitability of being “grazed upon by earth.” Yet Moore finds the joy, he writes of shyness and the bells of a church resounding, of counting hours: “I find words. I write of love.”
Enter is a collection of thoughtful meditations on hope at a moment when hope seems far-fetched, when humanity is faced with the inevitability of being “grazed upon by earth.” Yet Moore finds the joy, he writes of shyness and the bells of a church resounding, of counting hours: “I find words. I write of love.”
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About the Author
Credit: @ 2020 JoAnn Verburg
Praise
- “Moore’s experienced touch is light and concise without minimizing the substance of his inquiries.”—Rebecca Morgan Frank, Literary Hub
- “Let Jim Moore show you a way to the happiness the world can offer . . . he calls out more wonder and tenderness than I could have imagined. He is Orphic. He harmonizes our common pain with the small and complicated graces of living. I am so glad to enter into these poems, into this book!”—G. E. Patterson
- “Enter reminds us that for each departing there was also an entering. And though death is constantly present in this book, Moore pushes back against it with a shaggy refuge gathered from the minute pleasures that are often all we have. None of that feels like overworked reverence, but rather a poet finding, sometimes painstakingly, his way to believe it.”—CJ Evans
- “A wonderfully companionable warmth and conversational ease run through the poems in Enter. . . . I can't think of a poet today who kindles more resonance in thought and depth of feeling out of what (at first) seems simply fashioned. . . . It all feels quite extraordinary in Jim Moore's hands.”—Erin Belieu
