Red Shoes

“Honor Moore has written a searing exploration of exposure—as the concept impacts all stages of human life and even death.  As if watching the image of the “self” float to the surface of some emotion (in this case the intensely patient, observant honesty of the speaker), we struggle with the poet’s attempt to coalesce a legitimate sense of self.  In the process, a necessary and urgently attended-to sense of the “other” (parent, mentor, lover) emerges. What develops through this self-as-lens (even down to its refractive quality, for this is a poetry where a truly unique attention to color—emotional and actual—prevails) is an image of what, in the face of fracture—inner and outer—endures.”

— Jorie Graham, Pulitzer Prize-winning
author of From the New World,
Poems 1976-2014

“In this collection of poems, the singularity of the past century (even only yesterday) trails away from today and looks back to what actually happened, what hurt and gave pleasure. Only music can say goodbye to music, and only paint can paint its way out of itself.  Here the poems say good-bye to the lost body and its erotic languages. ‘Why does beauty always make me cry?’ Oscar Wilde wondered in front of his son.”

— Fanny Howe, author of On the Ground

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Reviews & Press

POETS’ CORNER by CAROL MUSKE-DUKES