Act V Scene I

Vibrant new poems from the award-winning nonagenarian poet who Rosanna Warren calls "Undaunted, outrageously alive..."

At 95 years old, Stanley Moss, winner of the 2016 National Jewish Book Award for Poetry, is writing some of the best poems of his life. Enclosed in Act V, Scene I are new poems written in 2018 through early 2020 and some rediscovered earlier poems never-before published.

Death is ugly, to hold Christ's dying
for all of us is beautiful. I believe
in the nothingness of everything--crumbs
ashes, the date, dust, under a female moon.
I consider notes, words, pigments,
rocks have a certain significance.
Bet your life creation is inconsequential.
I read Goethe for beautiful meanings.
Seeing one painting, he wrote, changed his life.
What can one person do? Damn proximity,
compose before you decompose,
shout help! help! in the ear of Moses,
make a hero of an ant in a wild rose.
—from "A Shout" in Act V Scene 1