If life is a sinuous, circuitous creek, around each bend is an unexpected landscape of insights and surprises which become, looking back, the stuff of wisdom. Let Maurice Hirsch be your guide through the pleasing yet deadly serious terrain of life experience recalled from memory and processed in meaningful and magical wisdom. And if you, as reader are also past the white-water rapids of middle age, as I am, you will find parallels of your own that personalize Maurice’s poetically-enhanced insights.

 

Tim Leach, author of Icarus Flees the Garden of Earthly Delights

Moon City Press is proud to announce that the winner of the 2013 Blue Moon Chapbook Contest is Debra Kang Dean of Bloomington, Indiana. Her chapbook, Fugitive Blues, will be released early in 2014. The judges also noted two runner-ups this year: Jenna Rindo of Pickett, Wisconsin for Blood Petals and Maurice Hirsch of Chesterfield, Missouri for Bodies in the Creek.

 

A Conversation with Maurice

Review of Stares to Other Places

By Thomas Hudson on January 14, 2015

I broke the seal on what I expected to be a good but regular book of poetry. What I found was much more . Maurice Hirsch invited me into his home, his life and his heart. On the pages of "Stares", which is what I now affectionately call this book, I found a story of man that sees life through searching eyes. This book was a journey through life and I am honored to have had the chance to be a passenger in the caravan.

I thoroughly enjoyed this "conversation" with Maurice and I wish I could sit with him on those steps on page 65 stare out at the water and have a good chat about anything, everything or nothing! I am proud and pleased to own this book and look forward anxiously to reading more of Maurice's work or should I say "our next conversation."

 

Oasis Journal 2012 accepted my poem "People a la Carte" and had it judged for their Best Poetry Contest by William Mawhinney, author of Songs in My Begging Bowl and Cairns Along the Road. Mawhinney chose the poem as Second Runner-up in the contest and had the following to say:

"I was drawn to this sharply observed encounter between two self-absorbed 'well coiffed' basketball fans and an immigrant waiter from Kosovo. Much is implied in this sly poem, lots of emotional, social, religious layers are piled on top of each other. The fun is to let it resonate among all your cultural assumptions."

He also placed "Requiem for My Dog" in his Top Ten. Both poems can be found in the journal which is available on Amazon.