Conversations with Lenard D. Moore

John Zheng

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781496853967
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

Known internationally for his Japanese-style poetry, Lenard D. Moore (b. 1958) has published eight poetry collections over the course of his career. Moore has distinguished himself especially in such forms as jazz poetry, haiku, tanka, renga, sequence, and haibun, expressing moments of aesthetic delight as well as a voice enriched with African American culture. Conversations with Lenard D. Moore is a fundamental collection of sixteen interviews with the esteemed writer and former president of the Haiku Society of America.

To Moore, jazz is a joyful celebration of American life and culture. The impacts of such great jazz musicians as Max Roach, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and Ray Charles are clear in his poetry. The conversations collected here lead the reader into Moore's creative mind, demonstrating his fusion of African American music, culture, and history into poetry, especially his jazz poetry, jazzku, and bluesku. In interviews that range from 1995 to 2023, Moore reveals his capabilities and responsibilities as a contemporary poet, professor, mentor, editor, and organizer. This volume serves as an indispensable source for writers and readers of poetry and African American literature.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chronology
• Innerview with Lenard D. Moore
• The Open Eye of Lenard D. Moore: An Interview
• On Being and Becoming a Writer: Interview with Lenard D. Moore
• A Haiku Consciousness: An Interview with Lenard D. Moore
• An Interview with Lenard D. Moore
• Mentoring a New Generation of African American Haiku Writers: Interview with Lenard D. Moore
• Lenard D. Moore: An Interview
• Lenard D. Moore on the Music of Poetry
• Lenard Moore: Poet, Editor, Teacher, and Mentor
• An Interview with Lenard D. Moore
• Interview with Lenard D. Moore
• Interview with Lenard D. Moore
• Building Poems Like a Carpenter: Interview with Lenard D. Moore
• Jazz Poetry as a Message of African American Culture: An Interview with Lenard D. Moore
• Between Grief and the Gospel: The Poetry of Lenard D. Moore
• Long Rain: An Interview with Lenard D. Moore
• Index