laying his soul out naked on the page....moving, surprising and funny...

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/>Stanley Moss's tremendous "My Sporting Life," written in his 96th and 97th years, is a Book of Being, bringing wholly into action, as Moss has for over seventy years, the fullness of the time in which we commonly live. Moss's poems are dazzling and brash, gentle and playful, open and generous, fiercely sharp in their moral witness, unlimited in their virtuosic, musical range and skill. 'I am grateful for the miracle of you and I being alive," the poet sings, a faithful lover of the deeply good. In his Elegy for Me, the poet proudly says, 'He made God laugh.' Stanley Moss makes God laugh. Only the best are capable of that.

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/>[Sample Poem]

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/>WHIFF

/>

/>I woke at 7a.m. as usual.

/>I fell back to sleep for reasons

/>too petty, too wild to know. I dreamed

/>I drove a golf ball 250 yards uphill.

/>In two and a half hours walking,

/>I drove golf balls up and down fairways

/>I never reached a green,

/>I never saw the first hole flag pole.

/>Waiting for a group ahead, we sat on a bench,

/>considered how the different sports we play reveal

/>what sexual needs we have, the dark games we play.

/>

/>I woke. It was 9:30a.m. Wrestling, we embraced,

/>in my head a sexual organ played Liebestod.

/>Football and baseball rivals televised in daylight,

/>bright overhead night lights show crowds the game.

/>Whoever throws the discus, now we remember

/>Greek discus throwers were naked, their bodies oiled,

/>We score touchdowns on intercepted passes.

/>We tackle the opposition with our heads between their legs.

/>Where else can you find the pleasure of five or six guys

/>piled up on you, trying to get a ball you fumbled on purpose?

/>Rugby players piled up like American football players

/>without the protection of helmets, shoulder pads,

/>what some gentleman Brits call "French letters."

/>

/>What are downs, why are shifts to the left or right?

/>Awake, I could play forever loving games.

/>In another dream that night, I played three sets

/>of mixed doubles with two ladies. I lost.Lawrence Joseph