The Moon Reflected Fire
Doug Anderson
1994 Kate Tufts Discovery Award
"Richard Burton said his father was famous as a miner because he could see the character of the coal. He would look at the
face a bit, then hit it hard in the right spot, and tons of coal would fall down. I don’t know if the story is true, but I know it’s
true of these poems about that war." "These are trenchant, wrenching poems. With artistry and honesty they perform an inquest into war and its corrosive after
effects." "Doug Anderson is one of the bravest poets I know, utterly uncompromising. His language brims with compassion, rage,
tenderness and pain. The Vietnam war is his primary subject, rendered here with a startling clarity of image and
understanding, a wrenching intimacy born of experience. Anderson is cursed and blessed with memory, and his considerable
poetic gift assures that we will not forget, either." "What is perhaps most striking about Doug Anderson’s The Moon Reflected Fire is the poet’s ability to have found forms
to contain experiences most of us would not be able to acknowledge let alone embrace. He has constructed these forms with
what might be called a lyrical narration wherein the poems are driven not simply by a linear telling of events, but by a
careful layering of consciousness as well."
—Jack Gilbert
—James Tate
—Martín Espada
—Bruce Weigl
about the author
Doug Anderson has written two books of poetry: The Moon
Reflected Fire, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Blues for
Unemployed Secret Police, for which he was awarded a grant from the Academy of American Poets. His poems have been widely anthologized and have appeared in many distinguished literary journals. He has received grants from the NEA
and other funding organizations, and has won many prizes, including a
2005 Pushcart Prize. Also the author of plays, screenplays and
criticism, he has just finished a memoir, Don't Rub Your Eyes, about
the Vietnam War and the nineteen-sixties. He has work forthcoming in
the Massachusetts Review and Azul Editions.
