Portraits, Bodies, Ghosts by Nicole Moro

The voice that introduces us to these portraits, bodies, and ghosts integral to the poet’s history is strong and direct, –“I fell for Sister C. so hard,/her wire rimmed glasses had me hooked;” (What I Learned), – and the gaze that lays them bare is unflinching. Acutely self-conscious and vulnerable, the speaker spares no one, including herself, yet manages to temper her treatment of all her subjects with compassion, tenderness, and, at times, humor: “feet together/knees out/I could dip myself down/an ugly duckling/ and come up swan.” (Ballerina) Like the “20 something felon” writing her first college essay who “becomes the character in her own story,” and thus, “against all odds,
finishes something, earns something,” the poet too discovers “that letters spell truth/spell hope” and demonstrates, movingly, that the act of writing itself can redeem and sanctify.

–Bruce Bennett, author of Just Another Day in Just Our Town  Poems: New And Selected, 2000-2016

In witty, lucid aphoristic lines with large import, Nicole Moro displays a talent for plunging the span of a whole psyche into a single image.  At her best, Moro is unforgettable. Her three-line lyric on Thanksgiving, “Carved Up,” may be an emblem for the suddenly inspired truth at any family dinner.  Her ballet-like riff on Williams transforms his iconic red wheelbarrow into a terrifying, moving and sublime fashion statement.  Whatever the subject—a crush on a nun or a Victorian lit professor, or a transgender transformation—the subject is the ghost of identity. Instead of writing the sprawling superpoem, Nicole Moro writes the underpoem. In Portraits, Bodies, Ghosts, the essential self may seem to disappear, but then whirls into the present, quick and juicy.

–Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst