Richard O. Moore
Encyclopedia
Richard O. Moore is an American poet associated with Kenneth Rexroth
and the San Francisco Renaissance
.
His earliest poetry was published in 1946 in the magazine Circle
. In 1949 he was one of the founders of KPFA
, the first listener-supported public radio station in the United States. He continued to write poetry, but seldom sought to publish. Over the next fifty years he was active as a documentary filmmaker and public television executive, at KQED
, San Francisco and KTCA, Minneapolis-Saint Paul.
Upon retirement in 2000, Moore returned full time to poetry. "Writing the Silences" edited by Brenda Hillman and Paul Ebenkamp, includes a selection of his poetry from 1946 to 2008.
transformed the American dream
into nightmare. Bewilderment, bitterness, and illness replaced the optimism that fueled the American dream. Subsequent years living with relatives brought increasing isolation and a near absolute sense of impermanence.
In 1934 the family joined the western diaspora in search of a healthier climate and the possibility of a job. Four years later, Frances Elizabeth Flinn Moore died of TB and her son, by then a teenager and a writer of wistful poetry, lost all trust in God and State. He became determined to make his own way free of family and of any and all allegiances. Berkeley
and the University of California
was the obvious place to start.
Once at Berkeley, Moore announced that "poetry is my vocation." With a friend, Thomas Parkinson
, he enrolled in Josephine Miles
' class in poetry. He also became a regular at Kenneth Rexroth
's informal sessions on poetry, pacifism
, and philosophical anarchism
. He became a leader of anti war
demonstrations at Sather Gate
and for a short while the editor of the Berkeley student literary magazine.
This period came to an abrupt end when he was expelled from the University for failure to complete courses for an entire semester. Again, he found himself alone. Overnight his supposedly pacifist friends, members of "The Yanks Are Not Coming", became, following Geramn's invasion of Soviet Union
, passionate supporters of the war. No longer at home in Berkeley, Moore moved to San Francisco, closer to the Rexroth circle and to a new and unexpected interest in modern dance. For several strenuous years Moore studied dance with May O'Donnell and Jose Limon
. He continued to write poetry and became a counselor for young men seeking to apply for CO status.
At the end of World War II, Moore, together with Eleanor McKinney moved to Duncans Mills, a former lumber town on the Russian River
. The idea was to live apart from the distractions of the city and most of all to write, study, and to live a meditative "near to nature" life. That dream came to an end when Eleanor, following Lewis Hill
, and Richard, following Eleanor, moved back to Berkeley with the intent to begin a radio station devoted to the principles of nonviolence and pacifism.
Moore applied for and was granted readmission to the University. Other students in his class were Robert Duncan
(whom Moore had known earlier through Pauline Kael
) and Jack Spicer
. The return to Berkeley coincided with the very infrequent publication of Moore's poetry, particularly in the magazine, Circle.
On April 15, 1949, KPFA
went on the air. The first three voices were: Ed Meece (chief engineer), Lewis Hill, and , presenter for the first program: "Anglo-American Folk Ballads." During this period Moore retained his connection with the Rexroth circle, and it was he who persuaded Kenneth to undertake what became a celebrated series of ad lib monologues.
Moore left KPFA and Pacifica Foundation
in 1952 but in 1954 returned to broadcasting, this time in television as an early staff member of KQED in San Francisco. He became the station's Director of Public Affairs
. In 1960 he received a CBS Fellowship for a year's study at Columbia University
, during which time he took classes in linguistic philosophy and began his reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein
. It would be accurate to say that Rexroth and Wittgenstein are the two major influences on Moore's poetry. They have little or nothing in common, which may explain the persistence of contradiction and radical doubt found in so much of Moore's poetry.
Moore returned to KQED in 1961 with the aim of producing documentary films for national public television
using recently discovered cinema verite techniques. For the next eight years Moore and his film unit produced an astonishing number of documentaries in current affairs, literature, art, and music. From 1968 to the 1980s, Moore produced television programs for both KQED and his own PTV Inc., and in 1981 joined the staff of KTCA in Minneapolis-Saint Paul as head of Special Projects. The decade of the eighties marks one of Moore's more productive periods. It was during this time that he completed, but did not submit for publication, "Ten Philosophical Asides," "This Morning," and most importantly the nine short poems that make up the sequence, "Holding On." In 1990 Moore retired with the objective of, as he told reporters, "returning full time to poetry."
In retirement with his wife, Ruth Moore, in a family-built house near Point Arena on the Northern California coast, Moore began to assemble poems from five decades, and in the process kindled a reconnection with the literary world. At the Writer's Conference Moore met the poet Brenda Hillman, who encouraged him to submit his poems for publication. Moore's response was indifferent. In 1997 Ruth Moore died. Three years later Moore left Point Arena intending to settle at The Redwoods in Mill Valley. Not prepared for a retirement home, he soon accepted the invitation of a friend to visit Southern California
. This detour brought him to Claremont, where he audited philosophy seminars on Wittgenstein given by the late D. Z. Phillips
at Claremont Graduate University
. At the urging of his children he returned in 2003 to The Redwoods. While still in Claremont he had renewed contact with Brenda Hillman. Finally out of patience with Moore's reluctance to publish, she suggested that they, with the help of one of her students, Paul Ebenkamp, edit a selection of poems. The editing took place at The Redwoods. "Writing the Silences" is the result.
"Writing the Silences" edited by Brenda Hillman and Paul Ebenkamp, University of California Press, Spring 2010
Although in 1949 Moore received the Emily Chamberlain Cook Prize in Poetry for the best unpublished verse submitted by an undergraduate, it appears not to have encouraged him to seek publication of his poems. The challenge of supporting a growing family, plus a continuing interest in radio and television programming, left little time for what he has described as "the secretarial work" of assembling and submitting poems to a publisher.
Moore's media career covers fifty years, from KPFA in Berkeley in 1949 to his retirement from KTCA, Minneapolis-Saint Paul in 2000. Although the last eight years were spent as the CEO of Twin Cities Public Television he is probably best remembered as a filmmaker.
It is worth noting that two of Moore's precedent setting documentary series involved writers. USA: Poetry in 1965 featured the following poets: John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, William Everson, Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Koch, Denise Levertov, Robert Lowell, Frank O'Hara, Charles Olson, Ed Sanders, Anne Sexton, Gary Snyder, John Wieners, Philip Whalen, Richard Wilbur, and Louis Zukoksky. In 1975, The Writer In America series included Robert Duncan (a second film), Janet Flanner, John Gardner, Ross Macdonald, Wright Morris, Toni Morrison, Muriel Rukeyser, and Eudora Welty.
As a filmmaker Moore's interests were not limited to writers. He secured the funding, produced, and directed documentaries on many subjects including the status of black youth in San Francisco; a film on Cuba and Fidel Castro; films on the photographer Dorothea Lange; a biography of Duke Ellington; a film with Merce Cunningham and John Cage; and a docudrama with Tom Wolfe.
Louisiana Diary (documentary)
: a CORE voter registration drive in Plaquemine (1963).
Take This Hammer
, with James Baldwin. (1964).
Anatomy of a Hit, with Vince Guaraldi (1964).
The Messenger from Violet Drive, with Elijah Muhammad. (1965).
Under these Trees. Dorthea Lange (1965). With Phil Greene.
The Closer for Me. Dorothea Lange (1965). With Phil Greene.
Report from Cuba (1966).
USA: Poetry, a series of ten films on American poets (1966).
Monterey Jazz Festival (1966).
Losing Just the Same (1966).
The Long Walk, the Navajo nation (1967). With Phil Greene
Duke Ellington, Love You Madly (1967).
A Concert of Sacred Music, Duke Ellington (1967).
California: the place for no story (1969). With director-cinema photographer Phil Greene
Assemblage: Merce Cunningham and John Cage, Ghirardelli Square (1968).
The Writer in America, a series of eight films with novelists, short story writers, and poets (1975).
Eudora Welty, a series of readings by Eudora Welty.
On Death and Dying, with Dr. Willard Gaylin, the KTCS series Hard Choices (1980).
The Cities of China, location director only. (1980).
Going Somewhere: the story of Route 66. KTCA (1982).
The San Francisco Mix, a series of films by young directors.
T.E.A.C.H. directed by Don Roman and Cliff Roberts. TV production training for minorities.
Alive from Off Center, KTCA series produced by John Schott.
* * *
For a biographer Moore's practice of various professions can be confusing. Is he a poet, an ex-dancer, a radio and television voice and image, a filmmaker, a TV executive, a peace activist, a family man, a withdrawn loner? Perhaps the best answer is, "None of the above." Yet a single thread runs through all of Richard O. Moore's "incarnations:" he began as, has continued to be, and remains a poet. He is not an academic, a critic, nor can he be identified exclusively with any group of poets. There is an obvious irony in the fact that Moore's poetry would likely have disappeared without notice had it not been for the insistence of Brenda Hillman. When asked about this he agreed, but added, "You know, poetry is what had kept me going. It has saved my life."
Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement...
and the San Francisco Renaissance
San Francisco Renaissance
The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco and which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetic avant-garde. However, others The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range...
.
His earliest poetry was published in 1946 in the magazine Circle
Circle
A circle is a simple shape of Euclidean geometry consisting of those points in a plane that are a given distance from a given point, the centre. The distance between any of the points and the centre is called the radius....
. In 1949 he was one of the founders of KPFA
KPFA
KPFA is a listener-funded progressive talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station signed on-the-air April 15 1949, as the first Pacifica Station...
, the first listener-supported public radio station in the United States. He continued to write poetry, but seldom sought to publish. Over the next fifty years he was active as a documentary filmmaker and public television executive, at KQED
KQED
KQED is a Public Broadcasting Service-member public television station in San Francisco, California, broadcasting digitally on UHF channel 30 . This channel is also carried on Comcast cable TV and via satellite by DirecTV and Dish Network...
, San Francisco and KTCA, Minneapolis-Saint Paul.
Upon retirement in 2000, Moore returned full time to poetry. "Writing the Silences" edited by Brenda Hillman and Paul Ebenkamp, includes a selection of his poetry from 1946 to 2008.
Biography
Richard Owen Moore is the only child of Harold Ellsworth Moore and Frances Elizabeth Flinn. A new house, in an upscale neighborhood promised a prosperous future; it was an illusion. For the Moore family, the Wall Street crash of 1929Wall Street Crash of 1929
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 , also known as the Great Crash, and the Stock Market Crash of 1929, was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout...
transformed the American dream
American Dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each...
into nightmare. Bewilderment, bitterness, and illness replaced the optimism that fueled the American dream. Subsequent years living with relatives brought increasing isolation and a near absolute sense of impermanence.
In 1934 the family joined the western diaspora in search of a healthier climate and the possibility of a job. Four years later, Frances Elizabeth Flinn Moore died of TB and her son, by then a teenager and a writer of wistful poetry, lost all trust in God and State. He became determined to make his own way free of family and of any and all allegiances. Berkeley
Berkeley
-United Kingdom:* Berkeley, Gloucestershire** Berkeley Castle**Berkeley * Berkeley Square, London* Berkeley Square, Bristol-United States of America:*Berkeley, California, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area...
and the University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
was the obvious place to start.
Once at Berkeley, Moore announced that "poetry is my vocation." With a friend, Thomas Parkinson
Thomas Parkinson
Thomas F. Parkinson Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, was a poet in his own right; an expert on the poetry of W. B. Yeats; and one of the first academic authorities to write about the Beat poets and novelists of San Francisco in the 1950s and 1960s...
, he enrolled in Josephine Miles
Josephine Miles
Josephine Miles was an American poet and literary critic; the first woman to be tenured in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She wrote over a dozen books of poetry and several works of criticism....
' class in poetry. He also became a regular at Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement...
's informal sessions on poetry, pacifism
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
, and philosophical anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
. He became a leader of anti war
Anti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...
demonstrations at Sather Gate
Sather Gate
Sather Gate is a prominent landmark separating Sproul Plaza from the bridge over Strawberry Creek, leading to the center of the University of California, Berkeley campus. The gate was donated by Jane K. Sather, a benefactor of the university, in memory of her late husband Peder Sather, a trustee of...
and for a short while the editor of the Berkeley student literary magazine.
This period came to an abrupt end when he was expelled from the University for failure to complete courses for an entire semester. Again, he found himself alone. Overnight his supposedly pacifist friends, members of "The Yanks Are Not Coming", became, following Geramn's invasion of Soviet Union
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, passionate supporters of the war. No longer at home in Berkeley, Moore moved to San Francisco, closer to the Rexroth circle and to a new and unexpected interest in modern dance. For several strenuous years Moore studied dance with May O'Donnell and Jose Limon
José Limón
José Arcadio Limón was a pioneer in the field of modern dance and choreography. In 1928, at age 20, he moved to New York City where he studied under Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman. In 1946, Limón founded the José Limón Dance Company...
. He continued to write poetry and became a counselor for young men seeking to apply for CO status.
At the end of World War II, Moore, together with Eleanor McKinney moved to Duncans Mills, a former lumber town on the Russian River
Russian River (California)
The Russian River, a southward-flowing river, drains of Sonoma and Mendocino counties in Northern California. With an annual average discharge of approximately , it is the second largest river flowing through the nine county Greater San Francisco Bay Area with a mainstem 110 miles ...
. The idea was to live apart from the distractions of the city and most of all to write, study, and to live a meditative "near to nature" life. That dream came to an end when Eleanor, following Lewis Hill
Lewis Hill
Lewis Hill was a co-founder of KPFA, the first listener-supported radio station in the United States, and the Pacifica Radio network....
, and Richard, following Eleanor, moved back to Berkeley with the intent to begin a radio station devoted to the principles of nonviolence and pacifism.
Moore applied for and was granted readmission to the University. Other students in his class were Robert Duncan
Robert Duncan (poet)
Robert Duncan was an American poet and a student of H.D. and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry and Black...
(whom Moore had known earlier through Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
) and Jack Spicer
Jack Spicer
Jack Spicer was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry.-Life and work:...
. The return to Berkeley coincided with the very infrequent publication of Moore's poetry, particularly in the magazine, Circle.
On April 15, 1949, KPFA
KPFA
KPFA is a listener-funded progressive talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station signed on-the-air April 15 1949, as the first Pacifica Station...
went on the air. The first three voices were: Ed Meece (chief engineer), Lewis Hill, and , presenter for the first program: "Anglo-American Folk Ballads." During this period Moore retained his connection with the Rexroth circle, and it was he who persuaded Kenneth to undertake what became a celebrated series of ad lib monologues.
Moore left KPFA and Pacifica Foundation
Pacifica Radio
Pacifica Radio is the oldest public radio network in the United States. It is a group of five independently operated, non-commercial, listener-supported radio stations that is known for its progressive/liberal political orientation. It is also a program service supplying over 100 affiliated...
in 1952 but in 1954 returned to broadcasting, this time in television as an early staff member of KQED in San Francisco. He became the station's Director of Public Affairs
Public affairs (broadcasting)
Public affairs, a broadcasting industry term, refers to television programs which focuses on matters of politics and public policy. Among commercial broadcasters, such programs are often only to satisfy Federal Communications Commission regulatory expectations and are not scheduled in prime time...
. In 1960 he received a CBS Fellowship for a year's study at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, during which time he took classes in linguistic philosophy and began his reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
. It would be accurate to say that Rexroth and Wittgenstein are the two major influences on Moore's poetry. They have little or nothing in common, which may explain the persistence of contradiction and radical doubt found in so much of Moore's poetry.
Moore returned to KQED in 1961 with the aim of producing documentary films for national public television
Public broadcasting
Public broadcasting includes radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing and commercial financing.Public broadcasting may be...
using recently discovered cinema verite techniques. For the next eight years Moore and his film unit produced an astonishing number of documentaries in current affairs, literature, art, and music. From 1968 to the 1980s, Moore produced television programs for both KQED and his own PTV Inc., and in 1981 joined the staff of KTCA in Minneapolis-Saint Paul as head of Special Projects. The decade of the eighties marks one of Moore's more productive periods. It was during this time that he completed, but did not submit for publication, "Ten Philosophical Asides," "This Morning," and most importantly the nine short poems that make up the sequence, "Holding On." In 1990 Moore retired with the objective of, as he told reporters, "returning full time to poetry."
In retirement with his wife, Ruth Moore, in a family-built house near Point Arena on the Northern California coast, Moore began to assemble poems from five decades, and in the process kindled a reconnection with the literary world. At the Writer's Conference Moore met the poet Brenda Hillman, who encouraged him to submit his poems for publication. Moore's response was indifferent. In 1997 Ruth Moore died. Three years later Moore left Point Arena intending to settle at The Redwoods in Mill Valley. Not prepared for a retirement home, he soon accepted the invitation of a friend to visit Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
. This detour brought him to Claremont, where he audited philosophy seminars on Wittgenstein given by the late D. Z. Phillips
D. Z. Phillips
Dewi Zephaniah Phillips , known as D. Z. Phillips, Dewi Z, or simply DZ, was a leading proponent of Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion and had a long academic career spanning five decades...
at Claremont Graduate University
Claremont Graduate University
Claremont Graduate University is a private, all-graduate research university located in Claremont, California, a city east of downtown Los Angeles...
. At the urging of his children he returned in 2003 to The Redwoods. While still in Claremont he had renewed contact with Brenda Hillman. Finally out of patience with Moore's reluctance to publish, she suggested that they, with the help of one of her students, Paul Ebenkamp, edit a selection of poems. The editing took place at The Redwoods. "Writing the Silences" is the result.
Poetry
"A Selection for Ruth" - 1997 - privately printed, not for sale."Writing the Silences" edited by Brenda Hillman and Paul Ebenkamp, University of California Press, Spring 2010
Although in 1949 Moore received the Emily Chamberlain Cook Prize in Poetry for the best unpublished verse submitted by an undergraduate, it appears not to have encouraged him to seek publication of his poems. The challenge of supporting a growing family, plus a continuing interest in radio and television programming, left little time for what he has described as "the secretarial work" of assembling and submitting poems to a publisher.
Moore's media career covers fifty years, from KPFA in Berkeley in 1949 to his retirement from KTCA, Minneapolis-Saint Paul in 2000. Although the last eight years were spent as the CEO of Twin Cities Public Television he is probably best remembered as a filmmaker.
It is worth noting that two of Moore's precedent setting documentary series involved writers. USA: Poetry in 1965 featured the following poets: John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, William Everson, Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Koch, Denise Levertov, Robert Lowell, Frank O'Hara, Charles Olson, Ed Sanders, Anne Sexton, Gary Snyder, John Wieners, Philip Whalen, Richard Wilbur, and Louis Zukoksky. In 1975, The Writer In America series included Robert Duncan (a second film), Janet Flanner, John Gardner, Ross Macdonald, Wright Morris, Toni Morrison, Muriel Rukeyser, and Eudora Welty.
As a filmmaker Moore's interests were not limited to writers. He secured the funding, produced, and directed documentaries on many subjects including the status of black youth in San Francisco; a film on Cuba and Fidel Castro; films on the photographer Dorothea Lange; a biography of Duke Ellington; a film with Merce Cunningham and John Cage; and a docudrama with Tom Wolfe.
Filmography (partial list)
Photography: The Incisive Art, with Ansel Adams (1960).Louisiana Diary (documentary)
Louisiana Diary (documentary)
Louisiana Diary is a documentary film produced and directed by KQED 's Richard O. Moore for National Educational Television in 1963. It was first aired in 1964...
: a CORE voter registration drive in Plaquemine (1963).
Take This Hammer
Take This Hammer (documentary)
Take This Hammer is a documentary film produced and directed by KQED 's Richard O. Moore for National Educational Television in 1963.It features KQED's mobile film unit following author and activist James Baldwin in the spring of 1963, as he's driven around San Francisco to meet with members of the...
, with James Baldwin. (1964).
Anatomy of a Hit, with Vince Guaraldi (1964).
The Messenger from Violet Drive, with Elijah Muhammad. (1965).
Under these Trees. Dorthea Lange (1965). With Phil Greene.
The Closer for Me. Dorothea Lange (1965). With Phil Greene.
Report from Cuba (1966).
USA: Poetry, a series of ten films on American poets (1966).
Monterey Jazz Festival (1966).
Losing Just the Same (1966).
The Long Walk, the Navajo nation (1967). With Phil Greene
Duke Ellington, Love You Madly (1967).
A Concert of Sacred Music, Duke Ellington (1967).
California: the place for no story (1969). With director-cinema photographer Phil Greene
Assemblage: Merce Cunningham and John Cage, Ghirardelli Square (1968).
The Writer in America, a series of eight films with novelists, short story writers, and poets (1975).
Eudora Welty, a series of readings by Eudora Welty.
On Death and Dying, with Dr. Willard Gaylin, the KTCS series Hard Choices (1980).
The Cities of China, location director only. (1980).
Going Somewhere: the story of Route 66. KTCA (1982).
Other media projects
National Center for Experiments in Television, directed by Brice Howard . .The San Francisco Mix, a series of films by young directors.
T.E.A.C.H. directed by Don Roman and Cliff Roberts. TV production training for minorities.
Alive from Off Center, KTCA series produced by John Schott.
* * *
For a biographer Moore's practice of various professions can be confusing. Is he a poet, an ex-dancer, a radio and television voice and image, a filmmaker, a TV executive, a peace activist, a family man, a withdrawn loner? Perhaps the best answer is, "None of the above." Yet a single thread runs through all of Richard O. Moore's "incarnations:" he began as, has continued to be, and remains a poet. He is not an academic, a critic, nor can he be identified exclusively with any group of poets. There is an obvious irony in the fact that Moore's poetry would likely have disappeared without notice had it not been for the insistence of Brenda Hillman. When asked about this he agreed, but added, "You know, poetry is what had kept me going. It has saved my life."