Phased II - Held, George

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Résumé :
A new chapbook of poems about the moon for poetry and moon lovers alike: These poems remind all of us, whether we're poets or not, how much we need and desire the moon, which is always with us. I love how Held's moon takes on human attributes, sometimes amenable, sometimes not - perhaps best displayed in the ending lines of the poem 'Menses': 'Think I can't / influence the tides or drive / men mad? Ask my lovers.' This is exactly the type of moon we want hovering over the city and its environs - tough when necessary like the inhabitants themselves. No, the moon won't pay our rent, but it's ours for free - full-throated and alive. Or as Held says about his relationship with the moon: 'Even Sandy / Can't take that / Away from we.' The moon in all its colors would agree. - Tim Suermondt, ELECTION NIGHT AND THE FIVE SATINS (Glass Lyre Press, 20I6) Here the moon becomes a mirror, the articulation of a life. In the same way the ocean tells us what the moon is feeling, these poems reveal the poetic speaker's soul. - Robert Carlos Garcia, founder of Get Fresh Books LLC, MELANCOL?A (Cervana Barva Press, 2016)

Biographie:
An eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a three-year Fulbright lecturer in Czechoslovakia, George Held taught English at Queens College for 37 years. His poems, short stories, book reviews, and translations have appeared in over a hundred publications including Circumference, Commonweal, Confrontation, and Notre Dame Review, and on Garrison Keillor's A Writer's Almanac, as well as in more than forty anthologies. Held's nineteen poetry collections include Bleak Splendor, After Shakespeare: Selected Sonnets, and the Neighbors series, animal poems for children, illustrated by Joung Un Kim. George lives in Greenwich Village with his wife, Cheryl.