History

Poetry. "Rodger Moody's HISTORY is not just his own story. Yes, these poems tell the story of one man's life from the American mid- century on to the present moment. But they also chart the ways a soul may gradually grow more ample, complex, supple, and humane. From childhood bewilderments and adolescent desires, to inevitable encounters with the world's savageries and insanities, and then to the tender dilemmas of parenthood and the stern losses one must learn to absorb, these poems reveal what Moody calls the 'real work.' As he says in the title poem, the labor of soul-making 'begins in the long dark' before you turn on the lights, and is 'lonely / against the backdrop of ordinary days.'"—Fred Marchant