“Todd Moore runs with Language and makes every word count.”
–Elmore Leonard
“Writing poetry is like playing virtual roulette. There is no ball to spin, there are no numbered slots for it to click across. It’s just you, death, and the words in your head and you are betting your blood that you can write something at least as good as anything out there and maybe better than any dream you’ve ever had. Just you, the words, and death.”
– Todd Moore, 14 November 1937 - 12 March 2010
– Todd Moore, 14 November 1937 - 12 March 2010
Todd Moore passed away at the age of 73 on March 12th, 2010, the very day that Dead Reckoning, his first full-length short poetry collection, was released by Epic Rites Press.
Todd and I spoke a few days before his untimely death. He was on his way out of town for the weekend. We made plans to talk on Monday. “In the meantime,” I said, “I’ll be here building a better bomb.”
Todd’s last word to me was “boom.”
Todd and I spoke a few days before his untimely death. He was on his way out of town for the weekend. We made plans to talk on Monday. “In the meantime,” I said, “I’ll be here building a better bomb.”
Todd’s last word to me was “boom.”
Exterior by Pablo Vision
Poetry by Todd Moore
146 pages
$15.50 + shipping
ISBN: 9780981184470
Epic Rites Press, March 2010
146 pages
$15.50 + shipping
ISBN: 9780981184470
Epic Rites Press, March 2010
“The words in the poems in Dead Reckoning by Todd Moore are not just written words, they are also like primal relics unearthed from an archaeological dig. Every word, every line, every poem is stitched together perfectly, seamlessly with not a single thread out of place. These poems go much deeper than bone, they speak to the blood in us.”
– Wolfgang Carstens | “Todd Moore was many things to many people... a fighter, a friend, a family man, a myth made from flesh and bones and bullets and heart. He was a poet at the peak of his creative power and “Dead Reckoning” was his top 40 love song for the ghosts that danced in his dreams. If you listen to his words, you can hear them dancing still. They will miss him forever – we all will.”
– John Dorsey |
“Todd Moore’s writing works at the nerve endings like a beast not yet named. Dead Reckoning exposes a corrupt and fetishistic America that habitually reinvents its own endgame. Each poem is a scattergun butt to the head; a perfectly worded organism that pulsates with the rhythms of life but also reveals the darkened mayhem of the soul.”
– John Macker
– John Macker
Instructions For Reading Dead Reckoning
by Todd Moore
I write poetry the way some people bet on roulette. I write poetry the way John Dillinger robbed banks. I do it compulsively, I do it quickly, I do it incessantly, I do it explosively because writing poetry means engaging in an act of unpredictable psychic aggression. When I write a poem I intend to assault you. I need to pull you into my long unforgiving nightmare war. And, make no doubt about it. My poetry is an assault on your person, your identity, your eyes, your skin. When you read one of my poems, you enter into a minefield that is not of your making. And, believe me, you may think you know where you are but you don’t. The thing is, when you detonate one of my mines, you’ll lose more than your legs. Reading my poetry means nothing less than engaging in an act of guerilla warfare. And, if writing is not war, then it is nothing at all.
And, I’m always writing poetry which means I am always at war. You might see me driving down the street. That doesn’t mean I am not writing. You might see me prowling a used bookstore for Kell Robertson or Tony Moffeit or John Yamrus or David Lerner chapbooks. That doesn’t mean I am not writing. You might see me hunkered way down in a movie theater seat with a sack of popcorn and a big drink. That doesn’t mean I am not writing. I am always writing because whatever does the writing in the blood and the bones of who we all are never shuts down. Never lets you alone. Keeps throwing snapped sticks in the bonfire of poetry somewhere back there or down there in the long torture and burn of the writing.
And when I go to my office to do some serious work, I’ll sit down and write a book of poetry from scratch, from a few lines of this, some thrown away lines of that. If I need to I can write twenty poems in a day. Or, more. It just depends on the mojo, the way the good stuff is coming, the velocity of the poem, the way my blood is igniting. The lunatic duende and when that appears it’s like Raymond Chandler’s Santa Ana winds and I can feel the faint cold touch of the butcher knife right at the jugular. And, the blood has to dance before just every poem, the blood has to dance because I am always at war and war is just simply a long and intricate Orange Blossom Special ghostdance with death.
DEAD RECKONING came that way. Shaken straight from the dreamgut along with the pulse of a title from an old Humphrey Bogart movie based on a David Goodis novel. I love stealing the titles of old noir novels and films. Maybe it goes back to the primal cave painting days when an artist hunter pulled a handful of blood out of one of those huge, slaughtered bisons, then ran into a cave and smeared the blood on the wall and in that torchlight the blood smear almost looked like something maybe a face and that made him go out and get more blood so he could do it again. It’s really all about stealing the blood and making dream images out of it. Aggression and war and poetry and blood. We have Guernikaed our way through thirty thousand years of painting and poetry and blood over blood.
the way
i write
is strictly
fuck you
no cap
ital letters
no punc
tuation
the words
jammed
together
or all
smashed
up like bro
ken glass
crushed
pop cans
& used
condoms
the ameri
can sen
tence is
either a
stutter
or a
scream
& i’m
waiting
to watch
it explode
(from DEAD RECKONING)
When I am beginning to put a manuscript together, I start with my desk first because it’s usually piled high with both new and old poems. There is no order or logic for the way I put a book of poetry together. It’s part arm wrestle, hundred yard dash, left hook right cross, half assed guess, pact with the devil, a conjured ritual of fictions and lies and I lunge through the stacks of paper on my floor. With DEAD RECKONING ninety percent of what I wanted I found there and if I didn’t find it there I wrote it. And, once I got going it just poured out of me the way that THE NAME IS DILLINGER poured out of me, the way that WORKING ON MY DUENDE poured out of me, the way that THE CORPSE IS DREAMING poured out of me, the way that THE RIDDLE OF THE WOODEN GUN poured out of me, the way that RUSSIAN ROULETTE poured out of me because once I am going, once I have launched myself into writing a book of poetry it almost feels as though I am driving a fast car down the interstate with my foot pressing the gas pedal right down to the floor.
i never know
where a poem
is going it’s
like a car
w/an invisible
driver a
dream that
is begging me
to watch it
a bomb that
longs to
go off i
never know
what a poem
is going to
tell me
because the
talking is
all words
over words a
sleep of fire
a speaking
in tongues
the lines
ache beyond
aching to
implode
every poem
is a dead
reckoning
a strategy
for getting
so lost no
psychic map
cd ever
find it
every poem
is a death
song &
death knows
that i
love to
sing off key
(from DEAD RECKONING)
I love the explosive velocity of speed in poetry along with the wild genius accidents of red hot words. And, that is the way DEAD RECKONING works. It’s like a book of poetry that secretly longs to be a novel except that in this novel the words don’t track across the page like long fat prose sentences but instead dive minimally down the page toward the violent wormhole of desire waiting at the bottom. DEAD RECKONING is THE BIG SLEEP of poetry because like Chandler’s novel, it has no plot. If it has any semblance of plot at all it’s the subversion of plot. And, remember, postmodern plots in poetry don’t exist except that they do. You just have to feel around in the dark for them or wait until the plot hits you like a slug fired from a long way off. When I put a plot in a book of poetry, it’s like having a black widow waiting in a bouquet of roses.
And, DEAD RECKONING doesn’t have Philip Marlow either. Who needs a detective when you can fall in love with the mystery of poetry, murder, blood, and all those killers waiting in the rain? Who needs a solution to a mystery when it’s the very essence of the mystery that you’ve been after all your life? Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd when you can roll in the ditches with shamans?
If you hustle the line, you know there is something so dark and magical and alive and dangerous about writing a book of poetry, especially under a self imposed deadline that it almost seems like a sentence of death. The whole time I was working on DEAD RECKONING it almost felt like death was standing halfway in and out of my office door. Sometimes it looked like he was trying to stick his finger in his ass, sometimes it looked like he was trying to masturbate. Except that he didn’t have an ass to stick his finger into and he didn’t have a penis to play with. He was made up of nothing but bone, casual lint, and black air. But, it didn’t matter because the more night mojo death tried to work against me the more it only heightened the atmosphere, stacked the odds against me and I always work best when the odds against me are all the way through the roof.
Writing poetry is like playing virtual roulette. There is no ball to spin, there are no numbered slots for it to click across. It’s just you, death, and the words in your head and you are betting your blood that you can write something at least as good as anything out there and maybe better than any dream you’ve ever had. Just you, the words, and death. That’s the ante and when you start writing the ball is in play. This time the bet against death is DEAD RECKONING. The next time it will be DILLINGER.
instructions
for playing
russian rou
lette first
put the
bullet in
an empty
chamber
spin the
cylinder
3 times
quickly
cock the
hammer
back lick
it off for
luck & the
black taste
of death
then point
the pistol
at yr head
take a
very deep
breath ex
hale slowly
& let yr
finger fall
in love w/
the trigger
the way
that maya
kovsky’s
did the
shock of
the click
cd kill
you
(from DEAD RECKONING)
And, I’m always writing poetry which means I am always at war. You might see me driving down the street. That doesn’t mean I am not writing. You might see me prowling a used bookstore for Kell Robertson or Tony Moffeit or John Yamrus or David Lerner chapbooks. That doesn’t mean I am not writing. You might see me hunkered way down in a movie theater seat with a sack of popcorn and a big drink. That doesn’t mean I am not writing. I am always writing because whatever does the writing in the blood and the bones of who we all are never shuts down. Never lets you alone. Keeps throwing snapped sticks in the bonfire of poetry somewhere back there or down there in the long torture and burn of the writing.
And when I go to my office to do some serious work, I’ll sit down and write a book of poetry from scratch, from a few lines of this, some thrown away lines of that. If I need to I can write twenty poems in a day. Or, more. It just depends on the mojo, the way the good stuff is coming, the velocity of the poem, the way my blood is igniting. The lunatic duende and when that appears it’s like Raymond Chandler’s Santa Ana winds and I can feel the faint cold touch of the butcher knife right at the jugular. And, the blood has to dance before just every poem, the blood has to dance because I am always at war and war is just simply a long and intricate Orange Blossom Special ghostdance with death.
DEAD RECKONING came that way. Shaken straight from the dreamgut along with the pulse of a title from an old Humphrey Bogart movie based on a David Goodis novel. I love stealing the titles of old noir novels and films. Maybe it goes back to the primal cave painting days when an artist hunter pulled a handful of blood out of one of those huge, slaughtered bisons, then ran into a cave and smeared the blood on the wall and in that torchlight the blood smear almost looked like something maybe a face and that made him go out and get more blood so he could do it again. It’s really all about stealing the blood and making dream images out of it. Aggression and war and poetry and blood. We have Guernikaed our way through thirty thousand years of painting and poetry and blood over blood.
the way
i write
is strictly
fuck you
no cap
ital letters
no punc
tuation
the words
jammed
together
or all
smashed
up like bro
ken glass
crushed
pop cans
& used
condoms
the ameri
can sen
tence is
either a
stutter
or a
scream
& i’m
waiting
to watch
it explode
(from DEAD RECKONING)
When I am beginning to put a manuscript together, I start with my desk first because it’s usually piled high with both new and old poems. There is no order or logic for the way I put a book of poetry together. It’s part arm wrestle, hundred yard dash, left hook right cross, half assed guess, pact with the devil, a conjured ritual of fictions and lies and I lunge through the stacks of paper on my floor. With DEAD RECKONING ninety percent of what I wanted I found there and if I didn’t find it there I wrote it. And, once I got going it just poured out of me the way that THE NAME IS DILLINGER poured out of me, the way that WORKING ON MY DUENDE poured out of me, the way that THE CORPSE IS DREAMING poured out of me, the way that THE RIDDLE OF THE WOODEN GUN poured out of me, the way that RUSSIAN ROULETTE poured out of me because once I am going, once I have launched myself into writing a book of poetry it almost feels as though I am driving a fast car down the interstate with my foot pressing the gas pedal right down to the floor.
i never know
where a poem
is going it’s
like a car
w/an invisible
driver a
dream that
is begging me
to watch it
a bomb that
longs to
go off i
never know
what a poem
is going to
tell me
because the
talking is
all words
over words a
sleep of fire
a speaking
in tongues
the lines
ache beyond
aching to
implode
every poem
is a dead
reckoning
a strategy
for getting
so lost no
psychic map
cd ever
find it
every poem
is a death
song &
death knows
that i
love to
sing off key
(from DEAD RECKONING)
I love the explosive velocity of speed in poetry along with the wild genius accidents of red hot words. And, that is the way DEAD RECKONING works. It’s like a book of poetry that secretly longs to be a novel except that in this novel the words don’t track across the page like long fat prose sentences but instead dive minimally down the page toward the violent wormhole of desire waiting at the bottom. DEAD RECKONING is THE BIG SLEEP of poetry because like Chandler’s novel, it has no plot. If it has any semblance of plot at all it’s the subversion of plot. And, remember, postmodern plots in poetry don’t exist except that they do. You just have to feel around in the dark for them or wait until the plot hits you like a slug fired from a long way off. When I put a plot in a book of poetry, it’s like having a black widow waiting in a bouquet of roses.
And, DEAD RECKONING doesn’t have Philip Marlow either. Who needs a detective when you can fall in love with the mystery of poetry, murder, blood, and all those killers waiting in the rain? Who needs a solution to a mystery when it’s the very essence of the mystery that you’ve been after all your life? Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd when you can roll in the ditches with shamans?
If you hustle the line, you know there is something so dark and magical and alive and dangerous about writing a book of poetry, especially under a self imposed deadline that it almost seems like a sentence of death. The whole time I was working on DEAD RECKONING it almost felt like death was standing halfway in and out of my office door. Sometimes it looked like he was trying to stick his finger in his ass, sometimes it looked like he was trying to masturbate. Except that he didn’t have an ass to stick his finger into and he didn’t have a penis to play with. He was made up of nothing but bone, casual lint, and black air. But, it didn’t matter because the more night mojo death tried to work against me the more it only heightened the atmosphere, stacked the odds against me and I always work best when the odds against me are all the way through the roof.
Writing poetry is like playing virtual roulette. There is no ball to spin, there are no numbered slots for it to click across. It’s just you, death, and the words in your head and you are betting your blood that you can write something at least as good as anything out there and maybe better than any dream you’ve ever had. Just you, the words, and death. That’s the ante and when you start writing the ball is in play. This time the bet against death is DEAD RECKONING. The next time it will be DILLINGER.
instructions
for playing
russian rou
lette first
put the
bullet in
an empty
chamber
spin the
cylinder
3 times
quickly
cock the
hammer
back lick
it off for
luck & the
black taste
of death
then point
the pistol
at yr head
take a
very deep
breath ex
hale slowly
& let yr
finger fall
in love w/
the trigger
the way
that maya
kovsky’s
did the
shock of
the click
cd kill
you
(from DEAD RECKONING)
Todd and I had just started on the preliminary edits of DILLINGER, his magnum opus, which we’d planned to release in three volumes over three years. Death, however, caught wind of our happiness and decided to crush it beneath its boot like a spent cigarette. As an appetizer, we were about to release a Dillinger broadside package. These broadsides were to be printed on Parchtone paper, numbered and signed by Todd. Like DILLINGER, They never saw the light of day.
As part of our pre-DILLINGER promotion, we decided to do a no-holds barred interview in January 2010. Originally planned to be released in 2011 (along with the completed broadside package) as part of a book that would feature new essays and poetry by Todd, our interview became the backbone of the first Epic Rites Journal – aptly subtitled “Building A Better Bomb.” The interview was the last one by Todd to appear in print.
In addition to my interview with Todd, the book also features new poetry by Rob Plath, John Yamrus, Gerald Locklin, Todd Moore, John Dorsey, Tony Moffeit, Patrick McKinnon, Jason Hardung, Wolfgang Carstens, Ben Smith, Casey Quinn, Jack Henry, Erek Smith, Mathias Nelson, Mike Meraz and Zach King-Smith; new prose by William Taylor Jr, Zack Wilson, Pablo Vision, Karl Koweski, Rob Plath, John Yamrus, Todd Moore, Tony Moffeit and Mark Cobb.
The Epic Rites Journal is wholly dedicated to Todd Moore.
Exterior by Pablo Vision
Poetry and Prose by various contributors.
Edited by Wolfgang Carstens
146 pages
$15.50 + shipping
ISBN: 9780981184494
Epic Rites Press, April 2010
Edited by Wolfgang Carstens
146 pages
$15.50 + shipping
ISBN: 9780981184494
Epic Rites Press, April 2010
“Forget about ‘small’ press journals that are nothing more than poorly edited, photocopied, crudely constructed pamphlets held together by rusty staples, dental floss and bubble gum. The Epic Rites Journal is a 138-page, perfect bound, professionally printed and assembled book!
The Epic Rites Journal is dedicated to Todd Moore. These sticks of dynamite are for you!” – Wolfgang Carstens | “Are your veins screaming for a dose of unsurpassed poetry and prose so hard-boiled it’ll take your teeth out? Feel the need to read rants where the frequency is unscrambled and the furrows are always lonely? Are your fingers frozen into gestures of deference, do you dare submit to the man who owns the satellites? You need a cure. Find it here. Epic Rites Print Journal, Issue One. Get it now.”
– Zack Wilson |
“This new journal from Epic Rites Press is an ax whacking away at the hollow, slanted trees in the wilderness of impotent literature, which includes both small and large presses that exist today. Working as a literary team, each writer’s words help hack a path through the tiresome, under-stimulating dead woods, leaving it for kindling while the ax in a clearing of its own making leans gleaming w/its head planted firmly in the earth, ready to keep forging ahead. This is a not just a journal, this is a weapon against miles and miles of rotting woods of so-called modern writing.”
– Rob Plath
– Rob Plath
The last radio interview with Todd happened on February 26th, 2010, when he appeared as a guest on The Ashtray with host Rob Plath. Todd was in fine form as he delivered bomb after bomb after bomb. About ten minutes before airtime Todd phoned and advised me to “buckle up my seat belt.”
Click “play” below and buckle up.
Listen to internet radio with epic rites radio on Blog Talk Radio
Some of the projects Todd and I were working on prior to his death include the release of his epic poem DILLINGER in its entirety, a book of short Dillinger poetry, a book of essays, a novel, and an autobiography along the lines of Hemmingway’s A MOVEABLE FEAST. Todd was an intensely prolific writer and many of these projects are complete – requiring nothing more than a madman to ignite the fuse.
The legacy of Todd Moore endures as his son, Theron, continues to release new, unpublished material through road/house – Saint Vitus Press. The first offering is GANGSTERS, HARLOTS AND THIEVES: DOWN AND OUT AT THE HOTEL CLIFTON. The book, through Todd’s poetry, essays and autobiographical writing, paint an unflinching portrait of growing up in post depression America at a down and out joint called the Hotel Clifton in Freeport, Illinois.
The legacy of Todd Moore endures as his son, Theron, continues to release new, unpublished material through road/house – Saint Vitus Press. The first offering is GANGSTERS, HARLOTS AND THIEVES: DOWN AND OUT AT THE HOTEL CLIFTON. The book, through Todd’s poetry, essays and autobiographical writing, paint an unflinching portrait of growing up in post depression America at a down and out joint called the Hotel Clifton in Freeport, Illinois.
“Reading this book is like watching Cagney in “White Heat” or Brando in “On the Waterfront.” It has that atmospheric, film noir quality of the movie “Detour” and the vibe and groove of Frank Miller’s “Sin City”; it’s gritty but most of all, it’s honest.
These are my father’s stories and recollections told with his voice through autobiographical writing and essays that employ his trademark quick description, narrative and pulp fiction inspired dialogue allowing Gangster, Harlots and Thieves… to connect with the reader immediately, whether they’re familiar with Moore, or not.
Part biography, part autobiography, Gangster, Harlots and Thieves… will grab you, hold onto you, and not let you go until the fat lady sings or the last shot of whiskey is finally downed. Enjoy!”
– Theron Moore, road/house – Saint Vitus Press
