Pocket Poems by Randal Fosdick Moore

Here's the thing - I am a poet.  And I am also an editor.  These pieces of information will weigh heavily on mind as I share my thoughts - poetic and editorial - on Pocket Poems by Randal Fosdick Moore.

There were poems here I absolutely loved...  But there were also pieces here that made me peevish and annoyed.  There were poems that I would love to sit with Mr. Moore and hash out - remove a line here, change the "you" to "I", or rearrange stanzas of an entire poem in a completely different order.  And there were poems so good I read and just sat back and felt them - felt the trail of sensation they left behind.

I disagree with the description on the back of the copy in my possession calling this slim volume a collection of "simple, polaroid, paranoid poems of human observations..."  Sure, this is a collection of simple pieces... and even Polaroid in its sudden, snapshotting look at experiences... But no way is this book "paranoid"!  And it isn't just a book of poems observing humans, it is also the poetry of being human and seeing, thinking, feeling.

And in these poems, I don't find "a shag carpet ride"...  No!  I find something else - something timeless, honest, vulnerable.  I am excited to tell people about Mr. Moore's poetry.  It is so true and real that it reminds me of Andrew Wyeth's paintings - unashamed and... like a Polaroid.  

With the lack of punctuation and capitalization found in ee cummings' works, I can sense Mr. Moore has lived through many artistic movements in painting, music, poetry, literature, and even politics.  And the poems are brief, sincere, and exact.  There is no drama and no made-up hysterics.

My real issue here is that some of the pieces remind me of ones I, myself, have written that are not amazing, not really to share, but just poems I wrote because they needed to come out and onto paper, thereby making room for the better lines and stanzas that would ultimately follow.  So I winced a bit when I came upon those.  But then I would read a piece like "never made":

shadow touching shadow
feeling with no fate
the eternal eerie echo
of love   
    that comes too late

cold damp cave of fever
dagger
with no blade
forlorn they left life undisturbed
by love
     they never made

Or "breaker":

i followed you in
to the shoreline
to touch you
when suddenly i felt you
slip from under me
on your way back to the sea

Poetry to me is a visual image of the senses conveyed in words.  Mr. Moore has captured in some of his works what I love in Jane Kenyon, Emily Dickinson, William Stafford, and Harry Chapin, Paul McCartney, Dan Fogelberg, and Andrew Wyeth, Vermeer, and Van Gogh - truth honestly seen and felt, then shared, quite simply.

For more information on Randal Fosdick Moore: http://www.jacksonvilleprogress.com/texas-man-writes-about-rusk-landmark/article_9ae2b202-c83c-58e7-b680-0ffca3a4509f.html

Photo Credit: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/611KU%2BKQM9L._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I received the book in exchange for a fair and honest review.