Improvisation Without Accompaniment

March 1, 2020
In the vibrant forward to Morton's first collection, poet Patricia Smith writes, Lines that won't leave become poems you can't walk away from. At so many turns and paces, Morton's lines do stick in the mind. In Quebec City, A kiss is a kind of breath: a form of breathing. In Loomings No Longer, I was all freshly aglimmer, / wave-persuaded into a gold possibility. Still again, in All Honeycombed, the Ground, Here vs. There when / all the while the earth is a giant stone sent skipping over nothingness. Morton at times seems to be waking from restless dreams, his poems brave attempts at trying to piece them into cohesion. His robust poems suggest multiple interpretations, and they are tender, none more so than Elegy for My Brother in the Wilderness, an epic in nine pages. Morton's poems are expert and instinctive, like a cool Ed Wilkerson sax solo bouncing with lived rhythms. Morton's consummate poems will echo long after they are read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)