Full Worm Moon

Like The Old Farmer's Almanac chronicles the cycles of sun, moon, stars, and planets, Full Worm Moon explores the profound transitions from promise to loss, depicting one woman's endeavor to ""move into a third space / hospitable for another life / more rare, more raw."" In particular, Julie L. Moore tracks the phases of a long marriage's brutal disintegration, a year as turbulent as the wind that uproots a birch tree, leaving it ""prostrate on the ground / like one spouse pleading / with the other not to leave."" Every month's full moon weaves through seasons of vicissitude, creating a new vocabulary for solitude without loneliness and endurance without passivity. As they delve into divorce's myriad aftershocks, Moore's poems remain intelligent and intimate; amid their stunning landscapes emerge both beauty and violence as well as a host of memorable characters: Milton and Monet, Charon and Cicero, Benedictine monks and Cooper's Hawks, clueless administrators and clever students, an oblivious weatherman and a philosophical neighbor. All are welcome, and in her lyrical, trustworthy voice, Moore guides us, with our ""longing / for answered prayer,"" to press on and ""practice . . . / anything but resignation.""
""Full Worm Moon calls to mind both the cycle of monthly full moons that structures this collection, and the change that arrives in the loosening of the earth at the end of winter. . . Moore's attention to details allows the most ordinary of moments to tip, without the slightest poetic willfulness, into the extraordinary. And, equally tuned to life's harshness and life's beneficence, Moore's Full Worm Moon finds a way to bless 'this place [we] wander through' even as life's sorrows are endured.""
--Robert Cording, author of Only So Far

""In a lyric voice infused with Julie L. Moore's own enduring faith, this collection mines the ruins of a longtime marriage and a woman's solo journey towards restoration. These marvelous poems return to the locus of changing seasons, marital strife, and love--in the darkness of the fallibly human overturned by the eternal brightness of the divine. . . Here is a remarkable book, in all its graceful beauty and savagery, to savor one syllable at a time: 'Dusk lifts the light from view/I know this first-hand/then hides it like a key beneath a stone.'""
--Karen An-hwei Lee, author of Phyla of Joy
""The full moon rises each month throughout this moving collection, shining down on 'the gritty corridors/of [a] long marriage,' as we watch it painfully unravel. . . Because the book ends with 'as you take each successive step,' we know that she's safe on her journey, a path she didn't choose, a woman newly and bravely alone. Beautifully crafted and artfully wrought, these poems will sear themselves on your memory long after you close the book.""
--Barbara Crooker, author of Les Fauves
""'What if the beautiful day is over?' wonders Julie Moore in her shattering new collection, Full Worm Moon. And indeed, poems about the end of a marriage wring the reader. . .These poems are rich with empathy for all living creatures, especially the exploited and abused. It's not hard to imagine Jesus striding through the cow pastures and Little League stadiums of Moore's poems. Amidst the world's disarray, Moore's playful wit and exultant language ultimately proclaim the persistence of tenderness, peace, and love.""
--Anna Krugovoy Silver, author of Second Bloom and From Nothing
Julie L. Moore is Associate Professor of English and Writing Center Director at Taylor University in Indiana. She is the author of three previous books of poetry, including Particular Scandals, which also appeared in The Poiema Poetry Series.