Now and Then

These are semi-autobiographical anecdotal poems, often based on associations of a place or event, in the present, that leads to memories over the life on the aging narrator.

The poems are set in Florida, Denver and, in a few instances, Montana. The narrator in the poems is elderly and so many of the poems deal with the difficulties of aging. The author hopes his attempts a humor can ameliorate the otherwise serious matter dealt with here. This should not be taken as a collection of light verse; the attempt has been to appeal to an audience of sophisticated readers already familiar with poetic genres. First glance, the poems look like single short paragraphs and so resemble prose poems; but the style contains elements not usually associated with prose poems: memories slide over one another, sometimes leading to momentary confusion as to time and place; but often, it seems to me, that is how memories work--one leads slantwise to another. Also, the line breaks here should alert the reader that indeed these are poems, not simple paragraphs. The book opens with a piece called SATURDAY, which suggests to the narrator a possible weekend pause in the process of aging; and ends with the narrator himself disappearing in an array of medicine capsules.

Murray Moulding is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and he has taught creative writing at colleges in Illinois, Montana, Oregon, and Colorado. His poetry and fiction have appeared in a wide variety of print and on-line magazines and anthologies. NOW AND Then is his seventh volume of poetry. He lives in Denver and Florida with his wife, Kate, and their dog, Shakira.