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“Age. It happens to us all. Advertisements inform usthat we can be sexual athletes at ninety, if only we buy the magic cure and follow the exercise guru’s advice. Yetthe evidence of our own lives is decidedly more human,more problematic, and full of petty perfidies. Age is notsimply the prolongation of our youth with the help of alittle dye to hide the grey hair but a fundamental processof transformation. We change, and as we change, we arehaunted or enlivened by the past we carry with us.Understanding all that we are and have experienced isdifficult enough, but communicating it to others is evenharder, especially when the gap is dramatic as the oneseparating today’s youth from today’s elders. This is thechasm which the poets of 
 Ash Moon
cross. Nearly ahundred in number, they are themselves aging or thecare-givers and companions of elders. With unblinkinghonesty they record their age as it is lived—despair anddereliction alongside grace and humor—and whatemerges is a true portrait of age with all its awkwardcomplexities.“Readers of 
 Ash Moon
 will find all these poems writtenin a fitting form, namely, ‘tanka,’ the eldest of poeticforms. The oldest continuously anthologized poetry inthe world (compared to which the venerable sonnet is amere stripling), tanka has been the vehicle by whichpoets ancient and modern have given voice to themyriad beauties and burdens of their lives. The result isa series of snapshots without commentary, allowing thereaders to directly experience the poets’ vision. They willfind much that resonates with them, and much to reflecton. The ash moon hangs over all our heads.” — M. Kei,Editor of 
 Atlas Poetica: A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka
, Editor-in-chief of 
Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka of 2008,
and author of 
 Heron Sea, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay
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DanielEssman

so, DM if i may call you that, what i've found, on reading you and some of your anthologies, is a greater appreciation of moments...not necessarily as opposed to the sweep and drama of action, but action, too, can be compressed into a noun, an image...i'm still working on what i mean...but/and thanks, again, dan

reply01 / 16 / 2010
dmgarrison

Thank you, Dan. Your observation is accurate. I am intensely aware that the correct time is always "Now." While we can contemplate the sweep of time and events, all of reality consists in moments, like jeweled beads strung on the filament of time. Best wishes, Denis.

01 / 17 / 2010
dmgarrison

Paperback & hard cover editions are available at www.themetpress.com - the publisher.

reply10 / 14 / 2009
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