On the Path

In a cinquain titled “Fate,” Mary E. Moore describes her subject this way:
Clamping
its teeth firmly
on that which comes to hand,
it bites down, regardless of fault
or faith.
Thanks to dark humor and forceful imagery, the poet has managed, within the scant twenty-two syllables allowed by the form, to dispense with the role of either morality or religious belief in human life. Again and again in this thoroughly satisfying collection—a dazzling array of strict forms, including limericks, double dactyls, villanelles, sonnets, triolets and rondeaus, as well as in free verse—Moore startles the reader by moving in an instant from laughter to rueful and sometimes shocking observation.
What she observes, with amusement, intelligence, and a kind of feisty acceptance, is nothing less than the inexorable realities, the transformations and losses wrought by aging, and the small but important comforts to be found “on the path” to our unavoidable destination.
I recommend, with grateful pleasure, these variously moving, funny, undeluded poems, as excellent traveling companions that will help the reader “contemplate with awe the places we pass.”
—Rhina P. Espaillat
What impressed me most about Mary E. Moore's work is her keen eye, her honesty and her accuracy. For me, those are cardinal virtues of writing. Poems of hers like “Widow” and “Coming and Going” are so real that it hurts to read them. And yet we're glad that we did, because we were able to see the world through her eyes’ unjaded experience.
—Michael R. Burch, editor of The HyperTexts