Prognosis: Poems

by Jim Moore

Jim Moore’s poems “are chips of reality, obsidian flakes of the heart and mind” (Jane Hirshfield)


In his eighth collection, the celebrated poet Jim Moore looks into unrelenting darkness where moments of tenderness and awe illuminate, at times suddenly like lightning in the night, at others, more quietly, as the steady glow of streetlights in a snowstorm. These are poems of both patience and urgency, of necessary attendance and helpless exuberance in the breathing world―something rare in contemporary poetry. Written in Minneapolis amid the COVID-19 pandemic’s masked and distanced loneliness, after the police murder of George Floyd, as an empire comes to an end, Prognosis turns toward the living moment as a surprising source of abundance. Here we find instances of essential human connection animated by a saving grace that pulls us back from depression and despair. Contemplating with playful wisdom what it is to brave the later years of one’s life, Moore revels in the possibilities of joy and mourns the limits of our capacity to greet the unknown with resolve and wonder. The prognosis Moore foresees demands continued stillness, continued “Also known as going home,” he writes. “Also known as getting over yourself.”

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

Published November 2, 2021

About the author

Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was an incredible collection of poems. Jim Moore writes about getting old, the pandemic,
the racial reckoning of 2020, and about the helpless but necessary state of living in complete awe of the world.

[Cyborg]

My recommendation is to read writers that currently live in your city.
Jim also lives in Minneapolis and his poems are pretty great no-nonsense observations. I like the way they sound in my brain.

I don't know how to review poetry. You'll like this. You should read it.

[Edgar Trevizo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magníficamente triste, magníficamente elegante, magnífico nuevo intento de despedida del gran Jim Moore, que se ha estado despidiendo desde sus primeros libros de juventud. Ojalá no sea este título el de la despedida última. Necesitamos más Jim Moore.

[Camille Dungy]

Let me begin this brief review by quoting a few of Jim Moore’s lines: “If you are closer to being old / than you would like to be and slowness / begins to redefine the idea of difficulty / into something you would much rather / take a pass on, then it is time for the sky / to grow larger than the earth, than the sea even . . . ” Throughout this book, Moore embraces this matter-of-fact outlook on the world, an outlook that allows him to slow down and see possibilities for pleasure even when the prognosis is dim. Like a man walking through a blizzard with a bright orange snow shovel (“Useless Shovel”), Moore writes and writes again “Poems That Keep Me from Forgetting Who I Am.” Moore wrote Prognosis in Minneapolis during the COVID pandemic, a time of heightened calls for social justice, the turbulence of a presidential campaign, and ever-increasing recognition of ecological peril. All that is in these pages, as are several of Moore’s dead or dying family and friends and his growing awareness of his own proximity to death. And yet, “I am seventy-seven, have no time to waste,” Moore writes. “It is time for me too, even now, to begin again.”

Review published originally with Orion Magazine: https://orionmagazine.org/2021/12/fif...

[Schnaucl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to read this book after reading one of the author's poems in the New Yorker which was about coming out of lockdown and I'm really glad I did. The poems felt urgent in a way I don't think I've ever felt before when reading poetry. The poems feel very timely, so I'm not sure how well they'll hold up later since some of the lines are very specific, for example, one about a gun being mistaken for a taser. There are references to the protests after George Floyd was murdered, the decline of America and the poems were written during Covid so a lot of them touch directly or indirectly on the pandemic and its associated traumas. It's a really powerful collection. I wish "How to Come Out of Lockdown" was a part of it, just so I'll have it when I buy the book but I think it was written more recently.

[Jesse Hassinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best poems in this collection are the dividing poems “And”. With those between ranging from earnest grief to bewildered surprise and the occasional distant remove of a 75-77 year-old viewing a world he doesn’t fully understand and longing/remembering the days when it made sense. A few gorgeous moments and a handful of wading through sludge. It’s not a bad collection, but it also doesn’t reach out and display the despair that it so plainly wants the reader to feel. This disconnect is dismaying.