Mahoning

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

A.F. Moritz is a prolific poet whose work has earned him a reputation
for thoughtful, technically assured writing in both Canada and the
United States. The Mahoning River flows through Ohio, and this volume is
a meditation on the region in which the poet was born. It is a
predominantly industrial landscape— “the low hills / and distant
ridges violet with factory smoke”—and the writer’s aim is to
recreate and come to terms with a child’s remembrance of “still
water, purple aster, / goldenrod, yarrow, a droning of cicadas, /
dragonflies and crickets—my world between / the fence and the
highway’s crumbling asphalt edge.” At the same time, an epigraph
from William Carlos Williams’s Paterson insists that, more than mere
reminiscence, it becomes an inquiry into roots and the nature of place.

Mahoning is a long poem comprising a series of short poems that, while
reasonably complete in themselves, collectively constitute a whole that
is greater than the sum of its parts. Moritz offers an ecological vision
of a fallen world, which retains poignant hints of the possibility of a
redeemed green place. It is illustrated by photographs of local
pollution taken by the poet’s father, art and science aptly combining
to make a firm moral statement.

The descriptive poems specifically devoted to the landscape are the
most successful. Shadowy figures haunt this landscape in the more
visionary poems, figures that seemingly shift from wraiths of childhood
to symbolic and perhaps psychological presences. These prove a little
too insubstantial for my taste, but I respect what Moritz is doing. His
control of rhythm and cadence is subtle, and the verse throughout is
distinguished by a chaste dignity and committed seriousness.

Moritz has been well served by his publishers, who have produced an
attractively designed

volume.