“You don’t live if there’s no poetry: you don’t live
at all, or if you appear to yourself to be living, you’re not.
You really are living, though, even if you’re dead,
because you do have poetry, poetry’s with you
whether or not you know it…”
Great Silent Ballad, beloved lyric poet A.F. Moritz’s twenty-second volume of poetry, in visionary terms forwards the assertion that poetry, a primordial reality, is in the current moment both the equal of, and the antidote to, the rest of present-day civilization and its suicidal nature.
The book unfolds in seven short sections that probe such topics as the crucial value of childhood; a human person’s development through maturity and age; the perennially avant-garde nature of great poetry no matter what time and place; and poetry’s inherent involvement with hope and creativity, life and feeling, freedom and love. Great Silent Ballad also reprises Moritz’s longstanding celebration of common human conversation, the apex of which (he argues convincingly) is what we call “poetry”—meaning not just the art of verse, but our total access to the goodness of natural existence.
“You don’t live if there’s no poetry: you don’t live
at all, or if you appear to yourself to be living, you’re not.
You really are living, though, even if you’re dead,
because you do have poetry, poetry’s with you
whether or not you know it…”
Great Silent Ballad, beloved lyric poet A.F. Moritz’s twenty-second volume of poetry, in visionary terms forwards the assertion that poetry, a primordial reality, is in the current moment both the equal of, and the antidote to, the rest of present-day civilization and its suicidal nature.
The book unfolds in seven short sections that probe such topics as the crucial value of childhood; a human person’s development through maturity and age; the perennially avant-garde nature of great poetry no matter what time and place; and poetry’s inherent involvement with hope and creativity, life and feeling, freedom and love. Great Silent Ballad also reprises Moritz’s longstanding celebration of common human conversation, the apex of which (he argues convincingly) is what we call “poetry”—meaning not just the art of verse, but our total access to the goodness of natural existence.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — Sep 24, 2024 |
| Specifications | 144 pages | 5.5 in x 8.5 in |
| Keywords | visionary; contemporary; avant-garde; Summer Snow; Robert Hass; Michael Crummey; Passengers; Lurch; Don McKay; Barbara Carey; |
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Supporting Resources
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Excerpt |
| Written By |
A. F. MORITZ’s entire post-education life has been spent in Toronto; he was the city’s poet laureate 2019-2023. He has written twenty-two books of poetry. His works with Anansi, since 2004, have received the Griffin Poetry Prize, the ReLit Award, the Beth Hokin Prize, and the Raymond Souster Award, and were finalists for the Governor General’s Award (twice) and the Trillium Award. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ingram Merrill Fellowship, and the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. |
| Written By |
|
A. F. MORITZ’s entire post-education life has been spent in Toronto; he was the city’s poet laureate 2019-2023. He has written twenty-two books of poetry. His works with Anansi, since 2004, have received the Griffin Poetry Prize, the ReLit Award, the Beth Hokin Prize, and the Raymond Souster Award, and were finalists for the Governor General’s Award (twice) and the Trillium Award. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ingram Merrill Fellowship, and the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. |
“Great Silent Ballad offers us a refreshing and uplifting vision in the face of violence, social injustice, and inevitable physical extinction, and some of the poems in it are among the finest Moritz has written in his long and distinguished career.” — The High Window
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