Shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award: Poetry and the League of Canadian Poets: Raymond Souster Award
The follow up to The Sentinel, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, A. F. Moritz's The New Measures is a bold collection of fiery, passionate, visionary, and fiercely singing new work. These poems make unique music, by turns tender and forceful, terrified and assured, grateful and enraged. They revel in pleasure, and the thirst for more pleasure. And they insist on the hope -- perhaps paradoxical, perhaps impossible, yet never extinguished -- for the perfection of a world both natural and human. The New Measures makes fear and grief into prophecy and joy at each turn of phrase. It is a brilliant new work from one of our greatest poets.
Moritz’s work isn’t light reading, its polished turns of phrase and fluid cadences notwithstanding. But taking the time to let these subtle, far-reaching poems sink in is itself spiritually revitalizing.
The New Measures articulates with great artistry its author's profound concern and abiding love for the human race.
By their mysteriousness and mythic quality... we are invited to see ourselves and our society in those imagined. The New Measures is a book of stand-alone poems that enrich one another through proximity. Moritz’s vision builds not just within but also between poems—between those of societal ruin, and those that dream longingly of paradise.