The Musician Approaching Sleep by J. Morris

J. Morris writes a poetry of deep composure. A poetry wrought in the face of what at every moment awaits in life to still the phrase, the line, the breath of the musician. That is to say, the musician we all are when under the baton of the heart’s conduct. His poems place us at that threshold where song meets death’s silence, even as Orpheus experiences it, in the moment played over and over, held between eternal hope and the intransigent ineluctables of loss.

An Excerpt

…. Then tacet once more,
waiting, returned beyond the lowest
possibility of sound, to listen,
to watch. As we watch

what is woven yet can’t be seen,
the beauty calling the quintet
and us to gather — all unseen.
We go home,

make our customary mistakes, confuse
visible signs with invisible grace.

About the Author

J. MORRIS grew up in the Washington, D.C., area, and lives there still. He has published fiction and poetry in many literary magazines in the U.S. and Great Britain, including Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, Evansville Review, Five Points, and Poetry International. A critical essay, “The Gliding Eye: Nabokov’s Marvelous Terror,” first published in The Southern Review, has been reprinted in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. His other career is as a songwriter and musician for Mulberry Coach, a collaboration with singer and lyricist Katie Fisher.