A new poetry collection from Richard Moore.

Sailing to Oblivion. Richard Moore. ( Light Quarterly Imprints POBOX 7500
Chicago, Illinois 60680) http://www.lightquarterly.com $13.

The first time I laid eyes on Richard Moore was in the musty and dusty cellar of
the late Book Cellar Café in Porter Square, Cambridge. He looked like Father
Time, with a flowing white beard; preaching to a bunch of poets that circled
around him. Moore has been part of the Boston-area poetry scene for a long time,
but I must admit that I wasn’t really familiar with his work. Moore sent me his
new poetry collection “Sailing to Oblivion,” and asked that poet Tom Daley
review it. Since Mr. Daley is not on the Ibbetson Update staff, and as far as I
know doesn’t review books, ( but has just released one), I decided to give Moore
a look.

Moore writes deliciously humorous poetry, with no bows to political correctness,
and believe it or not it rhymes! And it all works exceedingly well. I often have
a rhyme at the end of my poems, along with a zinger or two, so I was glad to see
a seasoned practiconer expertly employ these things. In “ Sailing to Oblivion:
An Aging Academic’s Lament,” Moore contemplates the changing times, and the
plight and irrelevance of the aging white male:

O for the good old days

when through the lit-crit maze

an article on Eliot

no matter, sir, how smelly it

might be, could still enhance you

and through the ranks advance you.

Easier now you say?

Be female, black or gay,

or, cleverest of stunts

be born all three at once?

And in this ditty of Moore’s, he describes the dynamics of the family through a
young bard’s eyes:



All In The Family



My mother, father: love, terrible fights;

My brother, sister: ditto, days and nights;

For me, much younger, no one--what a curse:

A poet now, I fight the universe. ( 13)

Moore who has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and has appeared in The New
Yorker, Atlantic, Poetry and other top- of -the- heap magazines, has written a
book that will surprise you ,and let you in on an aging poet’s decline, with
“sour gaiety,” humor and rhyme. You/ in the end / will have a good time.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/ Somerville, Mass./