Richard Moore's importance as a writer of intelligently crafted metrical poems is attested to by other well-known contemporary poets and by the frequent and consistent publication of his poetry in the finest literary journals. His versatility is remarkable, ranging from the strict Petrarchan sonnets of Word from the Hills (1972), through many inventive lyrical measures, a large group of elegiac-meter poems in journals, the blank verse of the narratives in Empires (1981), the rollicking trimeter couplets of The Education of a Mouse (1983), and finally the more loosely cadenced, but no less musical poems that he has been publishing recently. Also in recent years his essays on a wide variety of subjects--scientific, mathematical, and musical, as well as literary--have been appearing in distinguished journals.

Moore was born on 25 September 1927 in Stamford, Connecticut, and grew up in Riverside, Connecticut. His father, James Howard Moore, a publisher, was born in New Hampshire of...