The poems in Writing the Silences represent more than 60 years of Richard O. Moore’s work as a poet. Selected from seven full-length manuscripts written between 1946 and 2008, these poems reflect not only Moore’s place in literary history—he is the last of his generation of the legendary group of San Francisco Renaissance poets—but also his reemergence into today’s literary world after an important career as a filmmaker and producer in public radio and television. Writing the Silences reflects Moore’s commitment to freedom of form, his interest in language itself, and his dedication to issues of social justice and ecology.
Richard O. Moore, now 90, is a poet, filmmaker, and seminal figure in public radio and television. Moore belonged to the San Francisco Renaissance literary circle of Kenneth Rexroth in the 1940s and 1950s, which was a precursor to the Beat poetry movement. Writing the Silences is his second book. Moore is the 2010 recipient of the Milley Award for Achievement in the Literary Arts. Brenda Hillman is an award-winning poet who has published eight books of poems, most recently Practical Water. Her collection Loose Sugar was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1997. She is Olivia C. Filippi Professor of Poetry at Saint Mary's College. Paul Ebenkamp holds an M.F.A. from Saint Mary's College and works as a research assistant and editor.
"Here is poetry that reminds its readers that a poem is as much a crucible of thinking as it is a crucible of belief, that philosophical doubt and mythic vision do not oppose each other, but are contradictions in which world turns around to become word."—Dan Beachy-Quick, author of This Nest
136 pp.6 x 8Illus: 18 b/w photographs
9780520262447$26.95|£23.00Paper
Apr 2010