No Tear Is Commonplace

Overview

The poems gathered in this collection from distinguished poet Stanley Moss stage a passionate, curious, and often combative relationship with the world and the forces that shape human life and death. Moss’s range is wide: his poetry recalls the Adirondack wilderness of childhood summers, imagines a young Christ learning carpentry, and reflects on the tragedies of 20th-century Europe in a style that concerns itself less with rhyme than with diction and less obvious metrical patterns. What ultimately shines through is the poet’s commitment to the fullness of human experience in the present.

Reviews

"Again and again, coming upon a poem of Stanley Moss’s, I have had the feeling of being taken by surprise. Not simply by the eloquence or the direct authenticity of the language . . . [but for] the nature of his poetry itself, and from the mystery that his poems confront and embody, which makes them both intense and memorable."  —W. S. Merwin, Pulitzer Prize– and Tanning Prize–winning poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate

"It is time to celebrate the singular beauty and power of Stanley Moss’s poetry . . . . The damp genius of mortality presides."  —Stanley Kunitz, National Medal of the Arts awardee, National Book Award–winning poet, and two-time U.S. Poet Laureate

"Unthinkable questions . . . but when [Moss] formulates them they take on the quiet urgency of common daylight."  —John Ashbery, National Book Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning poet

Author Biography

Stanley Moss is a poet, an editor, a publisher, and an art dealer. He is the founder of the literary imprint Sheep Meadow Press and the author of God Breaketh Not All Men’s Hearts Alike and Rejoicing. He lives in New York City.