The Idea of the Garden

Poetry. Winner of the 2017 Richard Snyder Prize in Poetry. "Poems by Michael Moos often occupy a liminal space at the edge of the garden about which he so often writes, that edge beyond which wildness begins, a wildness which Moos is not afraid to evoke in his poems. These poems are themselves gardens, spaces where human nature and the natural world can have conversations that are at once sacred and profane. 'What is thirst for, if not for talking to God?' Moos writes. He could just as well have written instead of thirst, river, heron, tree, cricket, moon. These conversations that occur within the space of a Moos poem can be about God, loss, love, longing, ecstasy, solitude, bitterness: all the ancient topics that poems have responded to forever. In THE IDEA OF THE GARDEN, Michael Moos brings a distinctly contemporary sensibility to subjects of timeless importance. What more could we ask from a poet?"--Jim Moore