Conflicting Desire

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia. He is the
co-editor of It’s Still Winter, an online journal of contemporary
Canadian poetry and poetics, and Four Realities: Poets of Northern B.C.

When A.F. Moritz writes a book, people who care about poetry should read
it. He’s that good. Almost every poem in Conflicting Desires, is like
a tiny drama: compact, character-driven, psychologically complex. One
feels as if one’s been walking through a wax museum, able to hear the
thoughts of every character that has been frozen in time at a moment of
dramatic significance.

Most of the pieces in Conflicting Desire are written in the past tense.
They exude moods of longing, loss, and sober retrospection. Here are
people holding their lives up to self-scrutiny and the scrutiny of
readers through the missing

wall of the proscenium arch. This book must be read slowly, with an ear
for nuance of voice.