Enter: Poems

In Enter, poet Jim Moore navigates the public spaces of his neighborhood—parks, boardwalks, piazzas, even parking garages—and encounters people negotiating mortality in the pandemic age just as he is coming to terms with his own long story. In his signature lucid and wry voice, Moore acknowledges suffering while making room for joy and for moments of peace. These poems offer shelter to readers and, in summoning poets like Rilke and Tsvetaeva, remind us that poetry’s tenderness can be repaid in tenderness. “Please show me how to be you,” he writes in deeply intimate lines revealing a poet tapped into the networks of human connection vibrating under the surface of all the places humans gather.

Enter is a collection of thoughtful meditations on hope at a moment when hope seems far-fetched, when humanity is faced with the inevitability of being “grazed upon by earth.” Yet Moore finds the joy, he writes of shyness and the bells of a church resounding, of counting hours: “I find words. I write of love.” Enter is a collection of thoughtful meditations on hope at a moment when hope seems farfetched, when humanity is faced with the inevitability of being ‘grazed upon by earth.” Yet Jim Moore finds the joy, he writes of shyness and the bells of a church resounding, of counting hours: “I find words. I write of love.”