The Line

Poetry. THE LINE extends in a series of interlocking prose poems, creating a strobe-like effect of intensely imagined moments shifting between sleeping and waking. Sharp, satirical, lush, or clear, the narrative voice twists through, seeking a line through time to braid its selves together. Moxley's intrepid language tosses us into the swim of new experience; into a bracing intimacy with the writing consciousness."Something about these poems is in flight 'from each new instance of daylight,' something in them is 'asleep before belief,' not wanting the onerous responsibility of adhering to or directly articulating beliefs. And yet there is a compelling playfulness and curiosity in the poems as they move from an anatomy of desire in the present tense to an exploration of the darkness of past and future, in their refusal to 'snuff out the metaphysical questions.' There is, finally, the courage here to 'enter the grave alone'...'In other words, [to] write.'"—Julianne Buchsbaum"THE LINE extends in a series of interlocking prose poems, creating a strobe-like effect of intensely imagined moments shifting between sleeping and waking. Sharp, satirical, lush, or clear, the narrative voice twists through, seeking a line through time to braid its selves together. Moxley's intrepid language tosses us into the swim—into a bracing intimacy with the writing consciousness. These prose poems tell the story of sleeping and waking, of this very bout of writing, of the search for the line of time and the poet's immortality. THE LINE feels like a classic already, with its just words and its images suggested by sound and experience. It is a poetics but also a real, readable tale."—Alice Notley"We're in the state between sleep and waking, where consciousness resists the tasks of reason and routine but instead views, from the perspective of darkness, the whole span from newborn promise to the old mammals' erosion of muscle. Moxley's usual keen intelligence here comes with an oneiric fluidity as it hunts through the perplexities of life for THE LINE from past to future, the line for words to form and, implicitly, the ideal line of verse these prose poems play against with their amazing leaps, sly humor, and complex inference. You'll wish the morning sun would not win out, the book not come to its end."—Rosmarie Waldrop