The Snapping of the Stick by Aaron Lee Moore

Aaron Moore’s collection, The Snapping of the Stick, is an engaging exploration of surrealistic states of mind lubricated with allusions to T.S. Eliot, Gary Snyder, Wallace Stevens, and Michael McClure. His chapbook is dramatically fueled by the conflict a sensitive and perceptive narrator encounters in a world that cannot distinguish between genuine and “manufactured significance,” where meaning is “all part of a race.” As antidote to a world obsessed with arbitrary values, Moore offers poems that suggest authentic significance arises from sympathy with one’s own body, one’s family and friends, and one’s non-competitive relationship with the world. If one can find a way to sympathize even with one’s own acts of cruelty, as the narrator does in the title poem, “The Snapping of the Stick,” then he or she will be better prepared to understand the cruelty of other people and situations. Ultimately, the poems in this collection assert that life, however atrociously it might sometimes behave, offers a daily opportunity for enchantment. As the narrator in “Maybe I Am a Lord of a Ring” declares, “Maybe my life is fantastic” and constituted of “Components stolen from worlds away.”

–Donald Secreast, author of the novel, The Salamander Conspiracy; two short story collections, White Trash, Red Velvet, and The Rat Becomes Light, co-author of the travel guide, Adventuring in the Andes with Charles Frazier, and the poetry chapbook, Ruins Too Bright To Visit also published by Finishing Line Press.

Aaron Moore, longtime editor of Floyd County Moonshine, graces readers now with a cross-cultural image-rich chapbook, The Snapping of the Stick, which reflects a restless curiosity and love of language. These poems are limned with a unique voice and much humor, as they explore Virginia, Appalachia, graduate studies, Europe, and China. Aaron’s layered linguistic knowledge fuels these concrete poems—guiding with gentle cultural juxtapositions. Though Aaron is an experienced traveler (and scholar), he remains open to new learning. See his awe noting peach blossoms pile high in “Mao’s magnificent mausoleum”.) He can as easily explore Chinese dialects (“serpentine Sichuan hua to my foreign ear sound sibilant like s-s-snakes”), as the realities of Appalachia (“There’s a Family Dollar now; / No need to kill the bear”). This intimate and fresh chapbook reveals a breath-taking new voice.

–Mark Vogel, Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Author of over 250 poems in more than 40 literary journals.

Aaron Moore, the indefatigable editor of the long-running Floyd County Moonshine, has produced his first poetry chapbook—and what a wondrous read it is from start to finish. Moore bills himself as an Appalachian writer, and so he is, but his poems transcend region. His chapbook, “The Snapping of the Stick,” is actually international in scope (with some poems translated into Chinese). The poems are diverse in form and rhetoric, some traditional with rhyme, as well as more daring contemporary modes. But all are loaded with sensuous detail and images and even literary allusions and academic references. I particularly like the title poem because it speaks to me about my own sense of nostalgia: about how a young, innocent boy wantonly kills a baby duckling without realizing how barbaric the act, only to, moments later, lay a kind of memorial to the dead animal by placing a stick across its grave. For more local-color flavor, see “White Trash Ennui”:  There’s a Family Dollar now; / No need to kill the bear.  I predict that Aaron Moore will make a lasting mark on our literature as both a man of letters, in the good old-fashioned sense of the word, and as a poet to be reckoned with.

–Louis Gallo, editor and publisher of the now retired Barataria Review and Books: A New Orleans Review; recipient of NEA individual artist award for fiction; author of the forthcoming volumes of poetry: Crash, Clearing the Attic and Archaeology.