Soon - Stanley Moss

Undaunted, outrageously alive...a book to hold onto for dear life

Soon, Stanley Moss's monumental final book of poems, was completed late in his 99th year. His poetic mastery only increased with age. This collection adds dozens of stunning poems written since Almost Complete Poems took the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry in 2016. In his final selection of verse, Moss foregrounds an unparalleled freedom of heart, mind, and imagination. Soon includes verse epistles, elegies, and homages to friends and mentors who include W. H. Auden, Michael Schmidt, Yusef Komunyakaa, Jean Garrigue, Stanley Kunitz, Oliver Sacks, Emily Fragos, T. R. Hummer, Delmore Schwartz, James Wright, Laren McClung, W. S. Merwin, and Paul Celan, among many others. Moss was a lover of dogs and trees. He lifted engines against the Almighty and took delight in flouting cant. A force of nature, Moss wrote about art, sex, history, politics, rage, tenderness, gods, beauty, and love. He used poetry to understand and transform the world, following his unbounded curiosity. His poems delight in play.

[Sample Poem]

Soon

At 98, age changes the meaning of words.
It changes the face of the often spoken
English word, soon. I'm not sure of anything.
"I'll see you pretty soon," is not sure.
Soon changes attire perhaps
five times a day as the upper classes did.
I'm becoming true, older and older.
"I'll see you soon," may mean this evening,
the next day, a year, two weeks away.
Soon to a lover is a good deal longer
than to a good friend.
Soon may have a painful meaning.

Depending on where you are, night comes soon,
day comes sooner than later.
A boy may die when June's coming soon.
Why is he crying in December, so soon?
Soon is almost irrelevant.
Sometimes it pays to be irrelevant.
What's given in interest is soon taken away in taxes.

Soon is indefinite as weather.
A haiku ends soon, a sonnet ends later.
Life's versification wants to change soon.
Time given is taken away soon.
I could list beautiful words, tragic,
comic, colorful, colorless expressions.
Words change because they change their wants.
"I'll see you soon, soon as my bus arrives,"
changes meaning. It may mean
"I want to see you sooner than you will."
It adds a twist of lateness.
I conclude at my age
there's a touch of soon in every word,
a touch of never in every word,
a touch of God.